Poems, Years 2014 & 2015
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Pulsar Webzine Published Poems,
Year 2015 (& 2014)
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Pulsar #77, Pulsar Webzine #25, (December 2015)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #25, December 2015.
Also see September 2015 - March 2014 poems, further below.
Poem Index
Roots - Michael Jennings
Lombardy Poplars - Michael Jennings
December Ontology - Mark A. Murphy
The Reed - Thomas Ország-Land
Same Lines - David Pike
Schlafwagen (Bidding Fulda Farewell) - Felix Purat
The Scent of Love - Arash Titan
*
He no doubt thought
he was doing the right thing
when, tottering towards us,
he gave us the flower –
not caring it had been pulled out by the roots.
They no doubt thought
they were doing the right thing,
yet beauty is fading fast –
so keen were they on progress
that, not caring, we have been pulled out by the roots.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
Beyond a hedge and ivy clad fence
beyond the greenery of shrubs
some poplars rise up in the blue,
whispering of calm,
of strength, stability and peace.
Lombardy poplars shifting gently
in the evening breeze,
painting an Italian sky
in the heart of the Midlands.
Michael Jennings
*
Cling to the solidity of stone, its cold fire
though in another hour
it will be warm in the palm of your cold hand
and the boy who gifted it you, just a seven year old
mystery, part of a dream from which
you can never truly be shaken.
Poor as we are, the hum drum of cold winds
and heavy rain shall not infect
the purest hearts though it boughs
December poplars and weighs the grasses underfoot.
Let us hold hands in the infinite black space,
in the all-too-soon dark after sunset.
Then, if your teeth are strong enough, bite down
on to the yellow cob steaming before your winter broth.
Mark A. Murphy
Huddersfield, W. Yorkshire
*
I am the reed
translating the crude,
the boundless whine,
the pleading sigh
of the wandering wind
into formal song
in praise of the wonder
of wounded nature.
Kindle the wind
and stir up the storm:
the fiercer the wind,
the finer the sound.
Thomas Ország-Land
London
*
And the reality is
something different
from this, being
a kind of bang
phut
or damp squib
way out on little known
beaches
of the far-flung outer reaches,
a remote zone
that logic requests to
be home from home
but resembles something
vaguely familiar,
a touristy place
where holiday shirts
parade in the ozone air
of suppressed beer guts
and vacant stares,
suppressing
things they usually endure
by means of rote
being here, not there
and thankfully so,
at a time of year.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
July 2015
*
Schlafwagen (Bidding Fulda Farewell)
I cannot sleep inside this Schlafwagen:
rusted irons rattle below me
laid upon planks perpendicularly
placed where they horizontally face the
unremarkable bahnhof in dwindling Fulda:
why the uninteresting sloppily kisses my mind
is beyond my 21st century comprehension.
Falsifying dreams for my own consumption,
I permit due entry to several ensembles
of feathery cabaret dancers beaming
with the smiles of Balinese processions,
tapping their feet across a tankard’s rim
with swigs of Franconian hefe-weißen within,
the final prost to bid Fulda farewell
Felix Purat
Poland
*
The scent of your elegant body deadens my mind and leaves it imprecise
I want nor wine nor weed; your resuscitative breath alone shall suffice
I cannot say what loves have come and gone, but in your arms I come alive
There is a sacred sign in your silent sight, which bring forth the scent of paradise
Arash Titan
London
* * *
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Pulsar #76, Pulsar Webzine #24, (September 2015)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #24, September 2015.
Also see June 2015 - December 2014 poems, further below.
Poem Index
The Bird Man - Stephen Philip Druce
A Box of Wine - Stephen Philip Druce
Fishing - Michael Estabrook
Voyage - David Pike
Dusk - Thomas Ország-Land
For Ori - Al Rocheleau
For My Godmother - Ron Yazinski
Semi-Precious Globe - Ron Yazinski
*
He talked to
himself -
softly but
openly,
and with crooked
finger he pointed
skywards,
imitating a
flying bird, moving
his hands like
wings.
I was glad
to watch him
because I wanted
him to be right -
and he was,
there was something
flying up there.
He smiled - pleased
to be sane enough
to know that birds
fly too.
Stephen Philip Druce
Shrewsbury
*
The delivery driver from
the wine company mistakenly
delivered a box of wine
to the wrong house, and forgot
to ask for a signature from
the wrong customer, who said nothing
and drank all the wine.
The boss of the company berated
the driver for delivering the wine
to the wrong house, and for forgetting
to ask for a signature from the wrong customer,
who should have said something and not drunk
all the wine, and then he apologised to the right
customer for not delivering the wine to the right house.
The driver then delivered a box of wine
to the right house - asked the right customer
for a signature, and also apologised to him
for not delivering the wine to the right house.
Then he went to the wrong house and
told the wrong customer he had mistakenly
given him a box of wine and forgotten to ask
for his signature - “no shit” he said.
Stephen Philip Druce
*
“I’ve never been so busy in my life” he exclaims
after adding another item
to his To-Do List. Whatever happened
to retirement meaning being bored fishing
and falling asleep on the porch in the sun?
Michael Estabrook
Acton, MA, USA
*
Slowly, very slowly
perhaps even slower
than that
the buoyant structure
slewed gently onwards
across a flat
non-bilious sea.
Progress was made
in degrees, inching
pitching,
bearing towards a remote island promontory –
to navigate and elude rocks
of proven treachery.
No dolphins, sunfish
or basking sharks were on hand
to relieve the ennui
of open deck exhaust fumes
and a featureless sea
but steadily, eventually
the sojourn gained appeal
with slow-time charm and
style –
On docking at
Hugh Town, St Mary’s,
of the temperate
Scillonian isles.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
Blind windows still returned
the blushing glow of the evening
at Centre Point (for long
an empty skyscraper: issue
of our divorce from our purpose)
when life settled down below
on the dusty kerb in the shadows
to rest her exhausted feet.
The lingering glare of the light
burnished the homeward flow
of the yellow, grey and wine-red
cars in the traffic congestion.
Oblivious to their own beauty,
life’s fellow pedestrians morphed
into deities texting urgent
messages through the ether.
A saxophone player took loving
leave of the day... And then
the colours hesitated.
Softly rose the dusk,
billowing out of exhaust pipes,
engulfing London, and slowly
life filled her yearning lungs
with that mellow, polluted air.
Thomas Ország-Land
Highgate Village, London
*
Ori, my boy, this is what I love about you.
Always master of effect,
despite any slight that might have affected you.
Here we are! Have an apple.
On such Empyrean day, set for voyage
our near-sights hoping neath a present dew
of time and place, silver images
and endearments mounting
like so many scrawled inscriptions
on the program of your life across our way—
connect this afternoon.
We make bad mourners. We just won’t do.
Instead we fumble in the grass for the one thing
on which admirers can agree—
that someone young as you, cast to the emerald air
shall likely don the raiments of an uncontested heaven,
hear the blast of associate stars, or at very
least acquire and for our ears arouse
the one ascendant ever
of an offering in fugue, to place where you espy the scene
without encumbers, with whys of truth,
in company of newness and a new health
to sift and rise, rise you! flying from the prayers
of our affection, and look, apple ours,
at apples out
completely newborn eyes.
Al Rocheleau
Orlando, FL, USA
*
Jean Bilinski 1913-2015
I live in a converted dress factory,
Where for a hundred years women bent over their machines, drudging piece work,
Sweating long days stitching dresses
They could never afford.
In the late morning,
When the others have gone to work, and I’m reading in my favorite chair,
From somewhere down the hall,
I swear I hear the sound of sewing machines.
Back in my primitive school days,
The nuns would make this into a parable,
Like the ghosts are sewing shrouds for the blessed,
Special ones with open backs
So the saints can more modestly whip themselves
In god’s presence,
As if that’s the benefit of heaven.
But, luckily, there were better people in my life,
Like my godmother, who, for forty years, worked in a factory like this;
A woman who believed it was a poor god that didn’t make you want to dance.
I hope now that she’s gone,
She has sown herself a fancy dress for dancing her beloved Polka,
Something in red and white, with diamond covered ribbons,
In which she would be the glory of the chosen;
Where before a rhythm section of fallen angels
The Lord, with his voice like thunder,
Sings one traditional Polka after another,
His Polish blue eyes smiling on her
As she high-steps around the floor.
Ron Yazinski
Covington, Pennsylvania, USA
*
On a table in my study, sits a globe,
The countries of which are thin cuts of semi-precious stones
Set in seas of lapis.
Surrounded by dusty shelves and books, it alone is polished clean,
Because each time I enter the room,
I have to restore its balance;
For, no matter how often I set it aright, with the North Pole where it belongs,
As soon as I leave,
It slumps back on its side
As if struck by a glancing moon;
Then, the abalone shell of Australia lies at the equator, like a sheep,
Its woolly ass pointed to the sky;
At the bottom, the green jasper of India
Looks like a turkey ready for basting;
And across the top of the world,
The turquoise horse of the U S,
Knackered on Canada’s Mother of Pearl,
Thrusts its stiff Florida.
Since I bought it at a close-out sale,
I am stuck with its bright Rorschach’s,
Orienting me to myself more than geography:
No matter how often I insist the world behave as it should,
Gravity has its way.
Ron Yazinski
* * *
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Pulsar #75, Pulsar Webzine #23, (June 2015)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #23, June 2015.
Also see March 2015 - December 2014 poems, further below.
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Poem Index
Summer - S.V. Berry
Shadows Pass - Richard Dinges, Jr
Watching the Clock - Joseph Lisowski
Unwell - Bruce McRae
Gravitas - Bruce McRae
Fog of Dialogue - David Pike
What My Father Taught Me - Donna Pucciani
Getting to Know Each Other - John D. Robinson
The Personal and Public - Sam Silva
Marking on a Curve - Ron Yazinski
*
Light slanting from the corner of my peripheral vision —
Hazy warm white tinged with yellow beams —
Rough grass beneath the picnic blanket under my back
Toes brown from resting in the dust
Salt in my mouth, salt in the sky, salt everywhere
Nowhere to go and nothing to do but be
There
Smell of the ground, of water and hickory nuts
The lake lolling on under the cloud-splotched sky
The music of scattered flies and crickets —
An afternoon smooth as jazz, jazz, smooth as lilting jazz —
S.V. Berry
Atlanta, GA, USA
*
Shadows pass slowly,
dark memories I can
see back through into
long hot nights.
Cold beer cans sweat
against bare cheeks.
Hot tub grumbles,
misting eyes and faces
in a fogged swirl,
my backyard alive
again through this quiet
until interrupted,
awakened by strange
children who pass
through my shadows
into their own wily futures.
Richard Dinges, Jr.
Walton, NE, USA
*
Watching the Clock (inspired by a Hopkins drawing of a spray end of ash)
Light is smothered
Beneath the weight
Of dead leaves
Gasping, wet,
Dark against gray
Sky, sorrows
Layered
Over six decades
I am weary
And worn
Like a rosary overthumbed
By prayers
Mumbled, slurred,
Skipped, then
Unremembered.
What have I gained?
Only mistakes.
Only mistakes.
Joseph Lisowski
Richmond, Virginia, USA
*
The nurse keeps mum,
tipping out her medicine,
clinical, clean, our maven.
We’ve returned to the womb,
to a childlike state,
the nurse floating cot to cradle,
purring over cures and tinctures,
disease her chosen medium –
something you can work with.
Day becomes night becomes day…
We go in and out of consciousness
as one would when trapped
in a revolving door.
Mummified, I am sedated,
death’s mystery solved –
life is for the living,
and only then the earthen hospital,
the body bedridden in perpetuum.
Sister calling on her rounds.
My gracious angel.
Bruce McRae
Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada
*
Finally, the penny drops,
a book falls to the floor,
the cat leaps from a window ledge.
A love letter slips off a sickbed
and the known world is covered in snow,
snow fallen from an allegorical heaven.
When the old man says
time is short, and getting shorter.
When the old woman complains
my soul is leaving for worlds unknown,
and her grandchildren smiling,
not knowing what to say,
as if saying makes a difference.
Time, looking over your shoulder,
reading what a life has written,
rifling through your possessions,
throwing it all up in the air.
Watching it fall.
Bruce McRae
*
'There’s a lot
to be said about it'
he bled –
falling silent.
'I could talk
about it all day,'
she exclaimed –
as her voice
tailed away.
Followed by a long
drawn-out spell
of nothing expelled
by either party.
'Don’t get me started,'
he imparted
looking anxious and vacant
at the same time.
She declined to reply. . .
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
The word "feign" means "pretend,"
as a boxer in the ring,
though my father preferred
tennis to the fights.
When I was twelve
we'd go for walks on River Road.
He'd invented a kind of skip,
a hiccup in the pace. He'd signal "now,"
and together in a blink
we would soft-shoe once,
laughing together but feigning
that nothing had occurred,
our eyes on the road ahead.
Sometimes I would play
the old mahogany upright while he,
mimicking Ezio Pinza in South Pacific,
sang "Younger than Springtime"
over my shoulder, whistling
the notes he couldn't reach.
I learned from him to camouflage
mother's affair with gin.
We'd tell the neighbors
she had a touch of flu. I would be
as respectable in my navy school blazer
as he in his Brooks Brothers suit.
He was my fighter, my magician,
my master of pretense, and the day
mother took too many aspirin,
he could do anything for me
except make me disappear.
Donna Pucciani
Wheaton, IL, USA
*
It was his 43rd birthday and we celebrated
by drinking,
we drank a lot together
and in recent years he’d been in and out
of prison and had remarried
and
we were getting to know each other
a little and every now and then we
punched one another;
some kind of
macho thing between us I guess,
his wife was a spiteful pill-head;
we returned to his apartment,
we were
drunk,
his wife was laying naked,
passed-out on a bed,
we drank the last of the take-aways
whilst we listened to
Johnny Cash
then I left to meet
a girl and go to a
party.
I never saw him alive again
and
we were getting to know each other.
‘Death by misadventure ‘the
Coroner decided
by way of alcohol
and prescription drugs;
he died on his birthday
aged 43
and he was my dad.
John D. Robinson
Hastings, East Sussex
*
This guy called Damien plays the goat flute
does a concert that feels like sexual arrival
...haunting for the dead
...with full orchestral score.
I have a recording of these pieces
from a concert in Rumania
part in English
and part in his native tongue.
In one powerful section
you can hear a shuddering moan
as waves in crescendo flood the arena with passion.
I guess I've played that music
about a billion times
till I've become somewhat bored with it
and toward the end of the evening
and toward the end of my life
I switch to a low key classical station in Oregon
full of expressive movie scores
and various eclectic classics
from Bach to Stravinsky
they are more than anything
a way to fall asleep
...I guess that most things
are a way to fall asleep.
Sam Silva
Fayetteville, N.C.
*
Watching common cranes
Perform their courtship dance by the retention pond,
He remembers notes from his ninth-grade biology class:
That the gurgling sound the male makes as he twists his neck needs to be harsh,
Like fingernails on a blackboard;
And that the female does her part by feigning indifference,
Which further excites the male;
Until ultimately she submits because he’s the best she can do.
Not only was that all the sex education he received,
It was also one of the essay questions
On that year’s final exam.
The other demanded a verbatim proof of the soul as life force,
Based on the testimony of a woman
Whose spirit had floated like a balloon above her body
On the operating table,
Watching doctors pound her chest,
Reeling her reluctantly back for further remediation.
Since he left school, he missed a comforting audience
To judge his behavior, as he had done the cranes.
At the very least,
He thought it’d nice to be outside himself for a while,
Getting a different perspective from which to grade his life,
Giving himself an A for content and clarity;
Or no worse than a B-,
Because he no longer caused problems as the angry kid at the back of the class.
Ron Yazinski
Covington, Pennsylvania, USA
* * *
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Pulsar #74, Pulsar Webzine #22, (March 2015)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine.
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #22, March 2015.
Also see March - December 2014 poems, further below.
*
Poem Index
Time Does Not - Allison Grayhurst
Industrial Lichen - Bridget Khursheed
The shopping centre - Bridget Khursheed
A Poppy Garland for the Centenary of the First World War - Jim Newcombe
Downland - David Pike
More than Ever - Frank C. Praeger
Among Others, Teddybears - Frank C. Praeger
State of Emergency - Ian C Smith
Advancement - John Zedolik
*
Time does not speak
of the fall of sages, of how
their once passive journey led
to madness, of the hail that crashed
into the corners of their eyes when their pleas
for mercy were lost by the sound of the plummeting storm.
Time does not give life back to what has died
or even heal the grief of ghosts pacing through the
morgues.
Time is a shadow that envelops us all - it is
hope and despair combined.
Time is two lips speaking different words,
two hands unable to hold each other,
frozen in the spilt blood of alienation turned
to indifference.
Time is bone - breaks everything but suffering.
Time keeps its secrets, undoes the work
of gentle faith. Time is a tale-teller, making us believe
that nothing has meaning, making us forget that it is
only time.
Allison Grayhurst
Toronto, Canada
*
A room of a certain temperature,
the empty microscope bank
and much handled slides
engulfing equipment pitching
almost to the plastic sheeting
that ghosts the wet area door.
The bio-hazard sign is peeling
and always ignored.
This was only ever about dye:
an array of washing up tubs
colour-coded
by a stained residue of dust.
Someone’s jacket still hangs
next to the bag marked “party."
Mould on the cloakroom wall
in dark red rings circled by orange.
The green ferns on the windowsill
flourish in a derelict mill.
Bridget Khursheed
Melrose, Scottish Borders
*
The edges of snow remain pushed in berms around the car park.
Light from the Gala prinks the tarmac right up to the millstream.
I am going to Tesco. Past the urban bedding and granite,
the line of snow is ridiculous. Everything erased but this
like a child’s drawing. A memento of winter not finished
but started. A frame that makes my steps and recyclable bags
stop washed in bright potential, a spring empty of bulbs yet.
Bridget Khursheed
*
A Poppy Garland for the Centenary of the First World War
Farmed out to garrison towns, the incredible
men to whom you owe leisure waited in barracks
to entrench England’s liberty – the syntax
of the avant guard breaking as they fell.
To march on, suffering gangrene and sepsis
and see their mates mown down. Some for
disposal’s sake
upended as from a kiddies’ dumping truck
dispersing a cromlech of shovelled corpses.
These rocks are eggs the weasel smashed, burst boulders
that incubate no growth, wounds that will not
heal
nor ever speak, as burst wallets reveal
the importance of sweethearts to young soldiers.
The lads straight out of school, son, lover, soldier,
in whom so many roles were played, now lie
dead
where blowflies frenzy in the webs of blood
there to lust like harpies the carrion aura.
Ploughed into ruck and loam, where poppy flames
are blood become the viaticum of Christ,
their sacrifice has saved you, whose spirits were released
like bullets into graves that bear no names.
If the temporal contains eternity
then assuredly hell is here, for here
heaves
the stench of the damned cooking in their graves.
No fresh May sprigs deodorize such history.
Gorging the blood of tyrants will not appease
the earth or refresh the crops. Blood will
spill
and atone for nothing. The tyrants will
rise again, among other flames than these.
Jim Newcombe
London
*
Sooner or later,
or perhaps
before
the uproar
there was this,
a gentle hiss
of near silence,
a transient place
giving
a certain nuance
of gentleness,
a step back
from the brink
a time for reflection
to contemplate
and make sense;
calmness
in the wake
of constant
input.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
A dead racoon, dried-up bear scat with large yellow seeds,
two turtles slipping off a floating derelict door
into a lily pad covered pond.
Stone wall ruin levelled.
After overcast days,
an immense blue figuration of sky.
Verbal abuse in a shaded hollow,
pockets of gas fumes warp across the hillside,
sheets of newspaper fly up, flatten,
trappings of an inconclusive past.
Abandoned tire, burnt out candle, empty tin can
trespass one after the other.
Mosaic of sunlight and maple leaves,
a raven's dark, guttural call,
absent clouds,
absent talk,
and other absences that were no longer thought of.
Frank C. Praeger
Houghton MI, USA
*
Friends I have known.
It shall go no further.
How the past
has taken over,
controlled,
divided,
without relief in a letting go -
a life totalled.
A button missing,
acorns,
bunions,
disparate feelings,
unhinged
small furtive playthings -
tedium's trinkets
holier than ennui
but not arousing as a Bengal tiger
or hoped for horses on the horizon,
or, even, vigorous walks that clarify.
I have known
objects implode,
processions turned away,
childhood, teddybears, uncontrollable laughter,
the irritability of a sullen face,
a solemn pledge,
unsought for events,
friends and having forgotten their names -
a private catalogue.
Only so much retained,
the rest whiffs of air
and stains upon a sidewalk.
Frank C. Praeger
*
Temperature in the forties, this state ablaze
despite naysayers’ scorn of climate change,
trees threshed by fierce wind below cloud
dark with smoke, plumes ten miles from my window,
a low pressure change heads my way
like the old-time proverbial cavalry, perhaps.
Branches falling, light a hellish yellow,
from my gate I see my neighbours on their hill
leaving, silhouetted by shifting smoke.
Driving past looking my way oddly, they wave.
I watch them disappear, sit under a melaleuca
where six charcoal and red galahs
roost silently just above me, feathers ruffling.
I feel almost as helpless as a crushed bird.
Brittle leaves, small branches, crunch underfoot.
My neighbours return, stop outside my gate.
By phone we have been advised to leave.
Although reluctant, I assure them I will,
aware of my deserved caste as an old recluse.
The wind change hits, favouring my position,
cooling me and galahs but imperilling others.
I play the fire warning message, dial loved ones.
My city son tells me to get going. Now.
The cats, all my books, my cherished journals.
This beloved place when soft rain falls.
I close windows, doors, take wallet and glasses.
Ian C Smith
Calulu, Australia
*
The animals have light of the sun as
the medievals had the bell of the
church in order to
rule their lives. We must have
advanced since we have the
precision of digital clocks to lock us
into up and down forward and back,
legs splitting like scissors to slice air
in prescribed march
despite our instincts or desires that
might keep us in the sheets or have
kept us in the trees until rotation and
its real light
cut the night as sheerly, surely, as
any big hand, small hand
of invention.
John Zedolik
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
* * *
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Pulsar #73, Pulsar Webzine #21, (December 2014)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine.
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #21, December 2014.
Also see March - September 2014 poems, further below.
Poem Index
Childhood - Ann Egan
Helford Trees - David Pike
Stonehenge - Mark Rutter
Lucid Moon - David Sapp
Buoyancy - Julia Stothard
*
In my childhood I walked
among reeds and rushes,
chased rabbits, fled after hares.
Salley trees leaped eastwards,
chestnut trees mushroomed,
a blackbird thought in leafy caves.
In my childhood I heard pines
shimmer songs to one another,
saw buttercups beacon rays.
A white dogrose glided on ditches,
shadows speckled turns, disappeared,
sprays of stars flew over the land.
In my childhood I felt a dandelion’s
tainted past, golden rays in sorrow,
the Devil’s pencil traced stories,
concealed in purple spikes, resting
in a shawled dome of lines amid
a sough of whispering rushes.
Ann Egan
Co. Kildare, Ireland.
*
Autumnal leaves
in varying shades,
float as strands
of gold and green
in tidal rout,
lap back and forth
drawn gently towards
the estuary mouth.
On opposing banks
Helford trees
stand in ranks
of random splendour,
emerald and tan
fixed, yet
tumbling down
in arrays
of exotic fauna,
tumbling, tumbling
from tidal creeks
to the sea expanse
they adorn the high
and lower shore
to warm the heart
reflected in a brackish
dance.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
Here are the monster’s bones:
we must not go near them,
they are radioactive.
See they glow, white
with their 5000 year long
half-life.
We circle the carcass like flies.
It is picked clean
of muscle and sinew.
Nothing is left of the rolling eyes,
the hide which clothed it
in the fat of myth.
Scattered jenga. Pale dominoes.
Metacarpals
worked over by the beaks of rooks.
They winkle out every last morsel,
dressed in their undertaker’s weeds,
time’s inspectorate.
It is like a crime scene
cordoned off for the preservation
of evidence.
For whom is it being saved?
Let us closer, let us closer –
we crave to touch the holy relic,
the teeth of the whale
that swallowed Jonah,
bones of the beast,
the slain dragon.
How the stones resonate,
the white keys of a piano –
or are they the teeth
of the white horse
bared in a permanent grin
but for a few of them kicked-in
where history whistles
its meaningless tune?
God’s belly-button,
it holds the stars in their courses.
We have seen how they circle it
and the sun and the moon
champing in their stalls,
chafing against the sea’s chains.
It will not confess its secrets to us.
Mark Rutter
*
My eyes are open, waxing,
my yearning a veracious cliché;
my beautiful, lucid moon,
I’m sure the queue to adore you
winds impatiently around continents;
in the twilight I knew you
from far across the room,
arriving through dimming trees,
your luminous red gown
turning heads from sleep.
In the thickest piece of night,
impenetrable black catacomb,
you were a vivid, voracious light,
my sole illumination,
ardent laser beam ignition;
your long fingers raked
shadows across a gloaming quilt,
pressed deep violet and green
hued bruises brightly into
our skin – black, leafed limbs;
we rose and fell across the sky,
vast, black flue,
full, round kisses and thighs
thumping against the earth,
tugging at ocean tides.
In the morning light,
a softer shoulder, white
curving against the blue,
at the window, blithely naked,
hair mussed, dress strewn –
my lover who stayed past noon;
unlike those fickle planets, you
didn’t wane beneath the horizon,
a fading nocturne – ephemera of dreams;
you hovered above me, immutable,
my beautiful, lucid moon.
David Sapp
Berlin Heights, OH, USA
*
The first time he swims
he rises, then submerges,
spluttering an erratic progress
towards the edge.
Next time, he’s buoyant;
kicking a rhythm,
churning the surface
to a conquest of waves.
Now he can swim
his world is an ocean
that whispers of distance
and restlessness.
Along the equator,
Namibia to Brazil,
he skims the sea-blue map
of the Atlantic;
World Atlas laid on his lap,
he ponders
what a swimmer like him
could achieve.
Julia Stothard
Shepperton
* * *
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Pulsar #72, Pulsar Webzine #20, (September 2014)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine.
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #20, September 2014.
Also see March - June 2014 poems, further below.
*
Poem Index:
Dreamed - Stephen Komarnyckyj
Stepping Out - David Pike
Rockery - Donna Pucciani
The Old Man on Vacation - Sam Silva
Leaving all my dreams behind - Ian C. Smith
*
I dreamed you knitted me the river Colne
In silk shot through with blue and grey,
It spilled from your needles of carved bone,
And sighed through the valley,
And you were a birch tree in my arms,
And the sound of my loss was the sound of dogs,
Barking on rusted chains in a thousand farms,
And my arms were severed logs,
But I knew that we would meet,
In the river's backwash its kiss of foam
If only as the plaited light,
Sighing as it yearns upwards, home.
Stephen Komarnyckyj
Longwood, Huddersfield
*
Into the dark nothingness
of zilch
there ventured
three sponsored celebs,
fully indentured
with little else to do
and nothing to prove
other than they are
vacuous,
bathed in an exultant hue
of media madness . . .
Stepping out
they step
onwards, backwards
forwards, outwards, inwards
into a review
of cameras,
that focus on the living stew,
so that many
may be
fed.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
The gardens have squandered their riches
on an early spring, and now lie withered
and spent. The heather, of course,
still laughs its happy lavender
beside pink camellias blanched in the rain.
Too early for the rhododendrons
to come clambering down the hillside,
raucous and wild. Mud smudges
the stone steps, the puddled paths
reflecting the nothing of a low sky.
Elated that it's not raining today,
we drive here through motorway chaos
and wedge the car inside the gate,
prepare for waterfalls of color. Instead,
the daffodils hang their heads shrunken and brown,
the cherry blossoms have dropped in yesterday's
downpour, and the gaudy primrose haven't yet
elbowed their way through the ferns.
In future, we will recall these walks,
some prettier than others. The exquisite call
of the blackbird, trapped in a nondescript body,
sings delight from some scented corner
of mossed rock. We stop to listen, unable to find
the focal point of the open beak.
Rapt in the gifts of the present moment,
we smell the dampness binding leaf and flower
to stone and ear. Tonight
we'll imagine a burgundy moon
spilling the azaleas red.
Donna Pucciani
Wheaton, IL, USA
*
Within this laziest seed
this kernel
of a comely deed
there is the perfume that I long for
and a place
where invisible passions might explode.
Balm of breeze
and air conditioned ease
in this small room upstairs
whose ceiling fan is likewise rhythmic
in its calming motion
where computer music breathes an ocean
against a flickering screen
...between
the cushion and the head
...a pillow on a bed
of drunken snores
and rosaries of thought which conscious thought
might otherwise deny
is this thing I dream of deeply
cool
while summer heat outside
bakes the remnant relic
or the brains
of such a likewise fool
who ventures forth to stumble from a bar
beyond the hotel swimming pool
...because sex is buried in the mind
and far removed from that terrible
social neurosis
with which the hot hot streets are lined
with objects
and drunkenness
and tragic tears
come upon the dogs who drool
in pursuit of all of their desires
and avoidance of their fears.
Sam Silva
Fayetteville, N.C., USA
*
Trying to conjure something better
I journeyed far from my yesterdays
testing clumsy ambition.
Soaring into art’s realm I researched
love’s struggle in those reeking precincts
ingrained in memory’s clamorous labyrinth.
Lamplight seen from a train at night
cheers the heartsore, bitten and burnt,
but my bedchamber proved difficult.
Any way I turned seemed like exile,
despite precious books studied with care,
golden thoughts diligently read.
Those who dream of a well-lived life
should never meddle with the past
seeking nourishment from empty doorways.
Regret a maelstrom,
I must surrender, reckless no more,
sleep, dreamless in an ancient desert.
Ian C. Smith
Calulu, Australia
* * *
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Pulsar #71, Pulsar Webzine #19, (June 2014)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine.
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #19, June 2014.
Also see March 2014 poems, further below.
*
Poem Index:
Longing for Rebirth - B. Diehl
Trains - Richard Dinges Jr.
Up Against It - Michael Jennings
Tally - András Mezei (translated from Hungarian by
Thomas Ország-Land)
Anti-Allegory - Keith Moul
Clickers - David Pike
Stray Cats & Spiders - Bill Vartnaw
Pure Gold Baby - John Ward
Chance - Ron Yazinski
Antiques Roadshow - Ron Yazinski
*
Longing for Rebirth
Twisted heart, broken mind ––
sore winner with uncommon sense.
My ambition is on life support.
I just called in sick
for the fourth time this week,
with hopes of getting fired
before my bones convert to ice.
But it would be wrong
to refer to myself as “lazy.”
The brains of lazy people
are not riddled with paper cuts.
Even for me,
it’s hard to believe
I once had a vision
not dissimilar
to the night skies
over Montana.
I’ve knocked on wood
and gotten nails through my fist ––
been infected with mononucleosis
after French-kissing Lady Luck.
So maybe I just don’t strive
to be normal like I used to.
I’m getting bored
with my role as a drone.
And if I had a dime
for every hour I’ve wasted
in this capitalistic hive,
I’d fill my well to the brim
with wishes of rebirth.
No, I’m not an “anarchist.”
Fuck your political ideology.
Just lump me in with the artists.
Lump me in with the neurotic
activist-misfit-intellectuals ––
the off-course marchers
who aren’t afraid to step up
to that bitch of a queen bee
and say, “What’s in it for us?”
Emptiness and the workforce
go together like wet flesh and lye.
Folks, I’ve got nineteen
dollars and forty-eight
cents in my bank account.
And somehow,
it feels right to brag.
B. Diehl
Phillipsburg, NJ
*
Trains pass at night
to avoid daylight traffic.
A distant rumble thump
and clack, a single
hollow horn more echo
than warning, a waif
lost at night calls
to me from the edge
of my sleep into childhood
on the other side of tracks
I long since stopped
following. A shimmering
rail vanishes at sunrise.
Richard Dinges, Jr.
Walton, NE, USA
*
Drawn through those ancient doors
into light filtered through ancient stories,
a crucifix hanging above the altar;
attracted, led, led to face impossibility,
called to believe the unbelievable,
assent to what must die will live,
face to face with paradox,
the little known dwarfed against
the unquantifiable unknown,
weighed down with gifts
unrecognised, unacknowledged, unappreciated,
brought to our knees,
helpless, dependant and compromised,
wondering why we are not crushed specks
under the weight of the cosmos,
but instead, at peace, at peace,
drawn to things no eye has seen,
no ear heard, things beyond the mind of man.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
Counting heads at the gate,
the Düsseldorf guard kept tally.
Beneath a detailed statement
about the deportation,
1,007 lives
are described on the sheet
by groups of vertical lines
crossed out.
Holocaust Poetry for Our Time, translated from Hungarian
and Edited by Thomas Ország-Land. London & Budapest.
The Poetry of András Mezei (1930-2008) mourns the murder
of some half a million Hungarian citizens at the close of WW2.
*
Bald eagle pairs hunt from local trees all year. Now mid-winter,
I have seen no feasting, nor clean bones scattered carnally below.
One eagle squawks, herding prey within its mate’s silent killing arc,
only to sweep the forest floor with wing-beats, to be secure and eat.
Or so I assume by their habits within compass of my home and trees.
With most Americans, I see them as symbols too, often circling near,
sharp-eyed predators with beak and talons ready to entitle our freedom
as portrayed by shafted arrows and olive branch: wingspread overreach.
Keith Moul
Port Angeles, WA, USA
*
Many years ago
before Google,
when people were required
to think, have a vocabulary,
and not look at small
hand held screens,
or blink to signify
they were still alive,
there lived a multi-million
tribe
of primitive people
who conversed by speaking
in person,
to another person
and every now and then
used a pen,
to write, without prompts
or auto suggestion . . .
You wonder now
and put the question
how on earth, way back when
did they function?
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
feeding stray cats
in the last remaining brooderhouse
I step into & through...
the little red spider finds me
—at best—clumsy
the web was in a different place yesterday
the spider was again in the center
in the light
(I noticed that!)
the earth spins in its orbit
the sun comes through
holes in the roof
(reminders of the rain)
the web has gone from east to west
from north to south
always the spider draws in
catches
the light in its center
at the moment I'm there
am I also drawn in?
I forget, shift focus to cats
step through...
find spider dangling from my hat
it is a dance we do
as I place it on a rafter
or convenient post
to begin anew
the cats are not entertained by this
would rather I just fill their bowls
they, too, in the center of the universe.
Bill Vartnaw
Petaluma, CA, USA
*
Pure gold baby
What would you make
Of me standing here
In the tree howling cold
Would your flinty voice
Berate me for watching
You sleep your last life
Alone in a foreign bed
How cruel to hide you here
Amongst the unfriendly
Untended stones
What a parting shot
Here is a melancholy
That whispers your name
Sleep loudly pure gold baby
Drown out his loathsome voice.
John Ward
Accrington, Lancashire
*Title from “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath.
This poem was written after I visited the
untended grave of Sylvia Plath in Heptonstall.
*
I retain enough math to know that some infinities are larger than others;
Like the universe of fractions is larger than the one of whole numbers,
Though both are infinite.
And because the universe I lived in was large enough for me,
I assumed it was for my son,
A universe that could handle itself against any other
With one spiral galaxy tied behind its back;
It had no space for pathetic fallacies
Like moonbeams cuddle in the palm of your hand
Waiting to be petted;
Or shooting stars are the badges of angels
Deputized to earth;
I raised him to be as self-sufficient as an atheist,
Agreeable as I am to return my life force back to the night
From which it came.
So when he told me of the struggle his wife had
In delivering their son,
How both almost died before they reached a hospital
Driving through a foot of snow,
And how, when it was all over, and everyone was safe,
He was surprised to have cuts in the palm of his hand
From squeezing his beloved grandfather’s dog tags
Which he keeps in his pocket for luck.
For a moment, I was taken aback,
Before I remembered my elementary math
That some universes are just larger than others.
Ron Yazinski
Covington, Pennsylvania, USA
*
The ANTIQUES ROADSHOW worries me,
That an entire episode will be devoted
To items I discarded decades ago,
Items that are worth fortunes:
Like my childhood collection of Mantles and Koufaxes,
Which I gave a little cousin to stop his crying,
But could now pay for my grandson’s tuition;
Or my old desk upon which I worked my first poems,
And left for my younger brother when I moved away,
Is now a national treasure,
Handcrafted as it was by New England’s earliest cabinet maker
From wood salvaged from chests from the Mayflower;
A find of such historical importance that a museum would build a wing for it;
Or the cheap Dali print I bought at a yard sale,
And which my ex-wife donated to the Salvation Army
Because she didn’t want anything that reminded her of me,
Is now determined to be an original and valued at ten times the house I left her.
And then those smiling, excited faces,
Smirking with delight,
How they got the better of the fool
Who never knew what he had.
Ron Yazinski
* * *
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Pulsar #70, Pulsar Webzine #18, (March 2014)
Poems published in Pulsar Poetry Webzine.
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #18, March 2014
*
Poem Index:
Your Street - Stephen Philip Druce
Another Sapling - Ann Egan
Autumn - Tendai R Mwanakabio Notei
On the Contrary - David Pike
Self Portrait on a Cold and Golden Dream - Sam Silva
Irregularities - A K Whitehead
Favourite Song - Ron Yazinski
*
You may feel like a shot in the dark,
you may not be the one,
you may in such hurried melancholy,
spill your good intentions over foul smelling drains,
among the scattered wild cats and polluted pavement rags,
but you belong here - on your street.
There are no golden harps playing,
just the sound of shuffling stick-figures in perpendicular doubt.
Beyond the illusion of industrial ritual, lye the howling gutters
where so many souls were lost, in the brutal chaos of the hungry crowd
that spat them out on the biggest stage of all.
Stephen Philip Druce
Shropshire
*
I look upon the sapling
tree as it murmurs its way
to the cupola of the sky.
Stands straight and slender,
leaves in music’s unison along
a spine that bears the way.
Full of notes of air arias,
in tune with the breeze,
in memory with the wind.
Here now scaling skyward,
it firms itself in harmony
into song of earth’s deep.
Ann Egan
Clane, Co. Kildare, Ireland
*
Autumn
Forward to a reddish autumn
Multi-layered, multi-
coloured paths
Emblems of our archetypes
And metaphors
of our times
Unthinkable parameters
If colours could swap?
Tendai R Mwanakabio Notei
Chitungwiza city, Zimbabwe
*
In a total
non-discriminatory way
it has been observed
and I’d like to say
(but daren’t)
that all is not
what it seems,
but, of course
this does not imply
any stilted views, hidden agendas
or schemes
of a disproportionate
nature,
no, everything is in
order
(bit isn’t)
though appears more correct
than something completely
in-check,
on a pristine
squeaky clean day . . .
as the whole lot
slips away.
David Pike, Swindon, Wiltshire
*
Self Portrait as a Cold and Golden Dream
Red and blue pastel
...a kiss of white lips at the tip
and pale as well, the left brow
...and mystery
in eyes that stare and sip
the glare of some distant light.
And this is a cubist painting
parting to a dark side
where day to night is fading, fainting.
It is great art
but if I died and I remembered you this way
I would have a broken heart
and little, very little
else to say.
Sam Silva
Fayetteville, NC, USA
*
Sitting here with the white sea disintegrating
on the narrowing stretch of a wide, curving beach,
one is struck by the regularities of motion
which still, within limits, are self validating,
because each wave breaks with a predetermined reach
but is still a somewhat different edition
to the rest, despite its predictability.
Yet life, though it may exhibit certain rhythms,
still maintains within itself unsuspected
breaks and sweeps and such events are never pretty,
for life is not the same and comes through varied stems
that twist and turn and spurt in ways that many dread.
It is more like an examination for which
one could not prepare: the context and the questions,
the situations and the challenges always
without alternatives to which one wants to switch.
One may navigate a thousand such transitions
but the next will be hidden by a deeper haze.
A K Whitehead
Purston, Pontefract, Yorkshire
*
At ninety-two my mother will forgive herself
If she forgets some things,
Like the name of Tom Mix’s horse, Tony.
But not things that matter,
Like last night at a restaurant,
When the piano player asked the name of her and my father’s favorite song;
She fell so confused and quiet,
That he finally said, “I’ll bet it was this one,”
And tears came to her eyes as he sang “Always.”
Only the next morning does she tell me that she cried
Because, though that was a nice song, it wasn’t their song,
And how it riddled her not to think of the right answer,
And how disappointed my father would be that she forgot,
And that she feared she was losing him, her husband of sixty-five years,
One piece at a time;
But how relieved she was when the title came to her
As soon as got home and sat in his favorite chair
And reviewed her day with him as she does every night;
How she remembered her fiftieth high school reunion
When he whispered in her ear
That she was always the prettiest and smartest girl he ever knew,
While holding her tight and dancing to their song “The Tennessee Waltz.”
Ron Yazinski
Covington, Pennsylvania, USA
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