Poems Years 2019 - 2021 - most recent poems at the top.
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December 2021 (101 editions in total)
49th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Out of the Mist - Michael Jennings
The cupboard in granny's kitchen - Tom Kelly
River Teach Me - George Cassidy Payne
The Strand - David Pike
Walhalla Drive - David Sapp
Trees - Ian C Smith
Dark and Light - Soran M H
*
Out of the Mist
My need and yours
drew you from the shifting mist
that often hid but then restored
a more substantial you.
Finally the sun broke through
and at that moment kissed
acceptance of a life I’d lived in shadow hitherto.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
The cupboard in granny’s kitchen
had washed-out blue canvas squares
turning-up at the edges
black football laces of dirt
empty blue sugar bag, something for false teeth,
curled dish cloth, I thought was a dead mouse.
Granda never looked at Granny’s preserve:
she owned the detritus
Nobody went in their spare bedroom
after Granny died.
There was only Granda
his heart misplaced
door always open
no-one slept
beside the empty coal fire grate
never saw flames turning grey.
The room and cupboard empty
as my heart.
Tom Kelly
Blaydon
*
River Teach Me
-Inspired by a sacred Ute prayer
River teach me change
as falling leaves decompose in the formless current
River teach me hope
as the source and end, both come from mountains
River teach me how to get lost
as two young lovers walk along your bank not needing to be found
River teach me how to savor the now
as the sun glistens on the scales of a snake bathing
River teach me how to manifest what I want
as the immortality of your course is guided by creation
River teach me how to accept
as the chaotic swirling foams cover and pull all beings asunder
River teach me how to live without fear
as the salmon do when they breach the surface of a bear's claw
River teach me how to listen
as the empty space of the blackest ice is ancient and unborn
River teach me how to close my eyes and see
a force eternally moving when I am not looking
River teach me how to understand
as the memory of geese returning from their far off flights
River teach me how to believe in myself
as a beaver does when they forgo their fragile homes of sticks and mud
River teach me how to do nothing
as a heron wading, full of hidden knowledge, instantly unleashed
River teach me God
as there is nothing false about the opinion of creatures who need you to survive
George Cassidy Payne
Rochester, NY, USA
*
The Strand
Shuffling along
the pair of them
him bent over, hunched
inspecting the ground,
her, shorter
making no sound
towing a small brown dog
alive, but resembling
a stuffed toy, at heel
trundling on
as if on wheels.
Their clothes are dated
but that doesn’t matter
you could say faded
jaded, not smart
and lacking appeal to anyone
other than themselves,
plodding on
in the bustling seaside town
of bright summer apparel
and seasonal vim and vigour,
they ghost around
unnoticed by most
as people kaleidoscope
in and out of focus
talking, squawking
with endless chatter;
they are together,
their mottled skin resembling
faded leather,
breathing the air
walking the strand.
David Pike
Camelford, Cornwall
From David Pike’s 2012 book of poems, The Strand
*
Walhalla Drive
Walhalla Drive is a short, wooded
Lane in the center of the city,
Skyscrapers and airliners hovering above
The tree line, a modest but astonishing
Wilderness ringed with the teeth
Of driveways, decks, and barbecues.
The deer appear stranded here,
Cut off from the Olentangy River,
Their small, cloistered world caught
Between Weber Road on the right,
Tidy, wealthy cul-de-sacs on the left,
A six-lane freeway to the east,
And High Street to the west –
Buses, taco trucks, co-op galleries
And vintage clothing and record shops.
The does and fawns are rarely wary,
Immune to gawkers such as us –
The buck pointedly indifferent.
They seem remarkably content,
But we wondered if they wandered,
Surreptitiously, onto manicured lawns
At night, stealing tender grasses,
Ambling awkwardly on sidewalks.
And where do the does give birth
In this narrow space, and when
They die, where do their bones lie?
David Sapp
Berlin Heights, OH, USA
*
Trees
Unweighted by the crush of years to come, he pictures the cheap old house they bought at auction, its tumbledown outbuildings like a painting on a cliff above a river. Their children romp, sunlight speckled, through numerous trees to climb, on the property and lining their quiet narrow road. Birdsong. Cicadas. Butterflies. In the distance, more trees. Everywhere trees.
He should know there is no blueprint for happiness, realises hope is what impels us as we strive to live our dreams. She plies her profession, studies. He writes everything down, slant in the crabbed hand of uncertainty, sometimes thinks she always studies. The term, househusband, embarrasses him slightly, but he loves the idea of farmers as neighbours, those trees bathed in light.
It takes eight hours driving through the night. They start with I Spy, day dimming. After the Play School tapes have reached saturation point, their fractious children finally still, traffic thinned, they reach semi-mountainous terrain straddling two states. Occasional headlights coming their way crisscross for long periods like wartime searchlights in old movies.
Past midnight through silent hamlets she sleeps, exhausted like the children by this big move. He tunes the radio softly to jazz gems, exhilarated yet saddened by Coltrane’s tenor sax, confident they can thrust aside mishaps, electing to concentrate on life’s teeming possibilities, including their two paddocks, perfect for pet donkeys.
Nearing their destination his precious cargo begins to rouse. He cannot know how neglect of love’s demands as the thresh of years curls away shall undermine his trusting vision as chronicler, their grown children hooked on different dreams with no entitlement passports to contentment, his aridity, adrift in a blur of absence like a silenced bell, with a memory of night music, words calligraphic wreaths on paper.
Ian C Smith
Sale, Australia, 3850
*
Dark and Light-
When the magic of life
unlatches
the heritage of all wars
will come to an end.
On the boundaries
of light and dark
night and day
childhood and age
birth and death -
the thin line,
dissolving
on the breast of space,
is lost
with all our comedies and tragedies.
The moments of delight
like candles on a cake
die in the flickering of age,
other spirits gather
shivering around it.
Those who have passed
are quickly buried,
alone,
voices silent -
no warning can reach us.
A sound will come
out of the silence of night,
pain struck from the smallest creature
the ailing tree,
the moment when the weakest
reach to claim back their rights
in the dark,
beyond everything
that can be reached.
In daylight,
the powerful sun
alights on our faces,
like a hawk stooping out of the blue
or a bat at night,
striking its prey in utter darkness;
there is thought,
some validation to explain
our surreal dream…
An instant’s blinding coup
immediately
turns all inside out,
putting everything
in its perfect place.
Soran M H
Coventry
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*
September 2021 (100 editions in total)
48th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
The Adolescent Poet - John Grey.
The Chickadees - George Cassidy "Casey" Payne.
The Traveller - David Pike.
The Way Things Work - Gordon Scapens.
Of Battles Long Ago - Ian C. Smith.
Ambivalence - Anthony Wade.
*
The Adolescent Poet
At times,
I abandoned my poetry
in favor of the hair on
a girl’s shoulders -
at an age when
self-expression was everything,
badly-scribbled beginnings
made way for fumbled non-starters –
and clumsiness begat
the missed opportunities that followed
all the way up to you -
but then,
I’d crawl on hands and knees
back to poetry
where, far removed from my disillusion,
I took the chance
to brag a little.
John Grey
Johnston, RI, USA
*
The Chickadees
do not land in my palm because they trust me.
I am a phantom they barely notice. They sense my body heat,
the blood coaxed through my thin veins like tree sap, and they hear
my vibrations, the way Beethoven coped with going deaf, stopping
long enough to bathe their tawny-colored tongues with seed, crushed
seashells of safflower and thistle, feeding the groaning earth.
George Cassidy "Casey" Payne
Rochester, NY
*
The Traveller
During late summer hours
when darkness devours
dying tendrils of orange light,
the observer enters a transitional time,
a breath away from day to night
when shadows fade
upon desolate sward
and outcrops of Bodmin Moor
with its uneasy water place,
Dozmary Pool,
an ancient expanse, that is subject to
a perpetual task,
for all time, every night
of every day, a possessed soul comes,
by command
tasked to drain the pool by hand,
compelled to use
a broken limpet shell
to work, work, and never recant
chided by ungodly creatures,
that howl and snap,
but not tonight…
At a defunct coach stop,
a short step from Dozmary Pool
and destinations in between,
reclines an ill-defined person
more of a person shape
than a person who can be
fully seen.
There is no luggage
or impedimenta at the lonely place.
The traveller, if that is what it is,
reclines between fallen granite shale
and discarded slate
resembling an out of focus after thought,
a blurred impression
stuck in a cursed place,
from a past time, and horrific deeds
where dreams flicker
deep within the mind.
And Tregeagle waits
where coaches no longer run
alone, lingering,
there, not responding,
attempting to leave
a telling place,
that resonates beyond the grave.
David Pike
Camelford
I’m intrigued by Cornish ghost stories. I refer to the ghost of Jan Tregeagle and his alleged evil deeds in the ˜1600s leading to his spectre being tasked to drain Dozmary Pool by use of a perforated limpet shell, and his suggested escape. Type ‘legend of Jan Tregeagle,’ into ‘say’ Google search engine, for info. This poem is my own fanciful version / interpretation, based on my imagination and a lot of poetic licence. Apologies for any mis pronunciations. DP. © copyright David Pike, 26th July 2021.
*
The Way Things Work
In this city of my roots
they’ve erased a street
that folded my childhood home
in yesterday’s shabby skin.
No wounds, blood or tears
but modern houses
with other people’s dreams,
a smug air of progress,
and a complementary burial
for past landmarks.
A confusing new layout,
I can’t pinpoint my past,
but can count memories
that will always be searching
for a time when poverty
didn’t hold a grudge.
The area’s ragged hopes
never promised more
than an acceptance
of outdated conditions.
I take my leave,
walking the margins
of a remembered map, witness
to the end of a different era,
a loss that knows my name.
Gordon Scapens
Penwortham, Preston
*
Of Battles Long Ago
The boy’s father wears both belt and braces. No chance of catching this silent man with his pants down, a spectacle, the boy realises later, he never witnesses. Sleeves rolled, collarless shirt outdated, smoking, his father reads the ‘Mirror, News of the World, while the boy gobbles crunchy puffed wheat with extra sugar, still rationed, greedy, unnoticed, head cocked, reading sports results at an inconvenient angle, but with a crease between them.
Al Phillips (the Aldgate Tiger) lambastes his way to the British bantamweight diadem. Len (the Duke) Duquemin rampages, supreme destroyer on the attack. This calligraphic style of post-war power sports-writing as if the war had never ended, propaganda continued, stirs the boy. Hamlet might flourish at Tottenham Hotspur, too, goal-netting a quivering arras.
Odour of petrol. Rain falls silently on huddled house, privet, the tenebrous streets, washing away smog’s grime. For many seconds of what will become remembered rapture, alarm, now, the boy looks up – an earlier difficult angle – sees his father clasping, crushing his mother those sportswriters would have written, to the brass buttons of his khaki tunic, a beret folded in his epaulette, as these parents fiercely lock mouths, a tableau the boy never sees again.
That passionate stranger, brief leave too soon over, startles the boy in the blitzed city where bombs had not, his mother’s breasts heaving as her soldier vanishes into the blackout, two hundred hitchhiked miles of unsignposted roads before him, Luftwaffe overhead, a searchlight time of future frangible memories for the boy when he reaches manhood.
Fathers return changed
carnage over, back to peace
familial scars.
Ian C. Smith
Sale, Vic, 3850, Australia
*
Ambivalence
On an empty foreshore,
with the sonorous sighing
of the slow sea’s unfailing
reaching and retreating
across sea-smoothed stones,
a counterpoint
to the dolorous tolling
of a church bell
across a darkening bay
summoning those
who should be called,
and the vastness of sea and sky
pressing upon me,
I marvelled at other minds
that could encompass such matters
but wondered,
“Do they also possess the wisdom?”
Anthony Wade
Midleton, Co Cork, Ireland
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*
June 2021 (99 editions in total)
47th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Earthen Dam - Richard Dinges, Jr.
Darkness Rises - Richard Dinges, Jr.
Internview - Tom Kelly.
The Turn - Tom Kelly.
Chemotherapy - Edward Lee.
New Life - David Pike.
Cards, texts, phone calls - Emalisa Rose
Waiting for Another Present - Anthony Wade.
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Earthen Dam
A graceful mound wraps its shoulders
around creek’s flow, built with ancient
know-how to protect distant homes
from spring floods, unearthed from below
by muskrats’ older instinct. They
burrow into earth, erode what
we have built despite my hopeless
watch against nature’s steady pulse.
Richard Dinges, Jr
Walton, NE, USA
*
Darkness Rises
Shadows gather in my woods, flung
from gnarled trunks and limbs, ooze between
gooseberry brush that climbs even
before sun dips behind earth's
far flung arm, crouch behind fallen
branches, await moments to rise
and reclaim my yard from day's
long and far, unforgiving stare.
Richard Dinges, Jr
*
Interview
At twenty, hungry to change jobs,
I end up in a small engineering firm,
somewhere along the River Tyne.
The factory’s crippled by darkness.
It took three buses to get there.
The owner of this grease mountain
sits at a desk on a platform of wooden pallets,
motions for me to sit
on a very low seat,
giving me an eye-line of his shoes.
He asks how I find his place?
I say, ‘awful.’
Tom Kelly
Blaydon, Tyne & Wear
*
The Turn
See me running to the blacked-out church where I serve Mass.
The zealot is in the porch waiting
for a Requiem Mass, somebody’s late-grandmother
she once met.
There she is in the first taxi behind the hearse,
lost in black.
Picture the priest’s flowing vestments
flapping up the aisle
his keys ringing through the church
opening the door on our zealot
breaking the rules on wide smiles.
The priest nods a forced look.
She returns time and again
until her turn.
Tom Kelly
*
Chemotherapy
He stops, the razor
halfway down
his foamed cheek,
and wonders why
he's bothering
with this submission to appearance.
He finds his answer silently,
and finishes his shave,
the razor continuing to his skull,
taking the hair
that remains there,
smiling to himself
at this small victory.
Edward Lee
Longwood, Enfield
Co. Meath, Ireland
*
New Life
Five brown trout
of reasonable size
and one or two fry,
set against a show
of babbling water,
oblivious to me
as their narrator
watching with eager eyes,
pleased to spy
denizen life
charged with vitality…
swimming against the flow,
defying gravity.
David Pike
Camelford, Cornwall
*
Cards, texts, phone calls
There’s that three week period
between Christmas and New Years,
where our birthdays fall in.
It’s been two months of silence
this time; though I believe this
won’t be of a permanent nature.
But I wish mine was first.
This way, I need not meander
between text, card or phone call,
with a slight urge to do nothing.
I wish mine came first, making this
your dilemma, sister dear.
Emalisa Rose
Brooklyn, NY, USA
*
Waiting for Another Present
The far future was a distant land
when first their love was seeded,
growing strong and vitalising
in the ever present but with him
suddenly admitted to hospital
and succumbing to another’s Covid,
the far future docked with the present
where being the unwife
she was not permitted even to blow
what would have been a last kiss
through the shielding window,
nor were her fingers to release dry earth
into his deep grave for such rites of comfort
are the preserve of the blessed union,
and in these sick times even to mingle
among a crowd of graveside mourners
was denied her, and, too,
the soft condolences of almost friends,
and almost neighbours, and
her invisibility whets her pain
while she waits for a far future
without this black hole in her life.
Anthony Wade
Midleton, Co. Cork, Ireland
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*
March 2021 (98 editions in total)
46th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Palisade - Carla Scarano D'Antonio. Please note, Carla died on 10th March 2023, RIP.
Assisting in the Repair of a Damaged Underground Cable - Robert Dunsdon.
School Bullies - Noel King.
Sudden Stop - Bob Phillips.
Along with the Moon - David Pike.
Back When - Dr. Roger G. Singer.
inter views - Paul Tanner.
Skeleton Leaf - Emma Webb.
Audubon - Ron Yazinski.
Inventory - John Zedolik.
*
Palisade
After Alice Maher, portrait
I erected a palisade around my face
to contain my thoughts,
it is made of young twigs
with pointed sprouts at the tips,
they are tied by a string to form a fence
a stiff collar that keeps my head upright,
holds my mouth closed but lets me breathe.
I erected a palisade around my face,
the cut ends dig into my skin
keeping me safe.
Carla Scarano D’Antonio
Chobham, Surrey
*
Assisting in the Repair of a Damaged Underground Cable
Manoeuvring a mechanical digger takes touch;
takes a resigned vacuity,
a philosophical ennui receptive to half-heard bells,
a red kite, the reproof of rosemary
broken under the tracks;
to a blue-black beetle clambering out of a hole
six by four by a metre and a half deep
under a rising sun;
under great lumps of steam
spilling from a cooling tower,
climbing into a day of tics and inconsistences
finding its feet among the cones, the cable-jacks,
the numbers sprayed purple in the long, wet grass.
Robert Dunsdon
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
*
School Bullies
I dreaded the school bell,
we got out at three,
I braced my face as shown
but the reward of my bravery
was a hiding: a fist, a punch, a knock.
I sometimes ended up in the river
before they bored and the sweets
were gone from my pocket.
Now, what can I offer my son
it’s not for sweets now but
money
extortion
kickings
syringes.
Noel King
Tralee, Ireland
*
Sudden Stop
After dinner you stroll from the hotel
down cobblestone streets lit by gas lamp
The clip-clop of long departed horses still audible
The clatter of the carriage long forgotten
As you turn the corner towards the town’s only pub
The warmth from the hearth beckons you inside
Whiskey to take the chill from your bones
The sojourn is coming to an end tomorrow
Soon you’ll be back in a Midwestern winter
plying your trade amid the whirl of the printing press,
dreaming of the solitary blank page
never to be written about your next adventure -
The bullet train speeding towards your final destination.
Bob Phillips
Savannah, TX, USA
*
Along with the Moon
He reached out
with an extended litter picker
and pulled a star
out of the void
roots and all
and placed the radiant
thing
in a rusty biscuit tin
that had once belonged
to his nan,
and that, my friend
is how it began
all those seconds ago,
and it’s still there now
rattling around - along with the moon
and its gentle glow
captured, contained and
not on show –
but occasionally a beam of incandescent light
leaks out
through a crack in the night,
happy to show, it was what it was
and did what it did,
but held in check
by a biscuit tin lid.
David Pike
Camelford, Cornwall
*
Back When
a city
I once knew,
a road leading
in and then out
to a place
where a vacancy sign
with rusty hinges
squeaks sadly
near open doors
broken windows
shingles missing
and a three-legged chair
next to a fountain
where a headless
plastic flamingo
leans backwards,
its body filled
with sand
Dr. Roger G. Singer
Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA
*
inter views
I shook his hand
and sat down
opposite him.
I smiled at him,
willing.
Then he gave me a pen.
‘Now then,’ he said.
‘sell me that pen!’
So I got up and walked out.
Standing at the bus stop
I reached into my pockets for change
only to find
I still had the pen.
Well, if he wanted it back
he’d have to pay me.
See?
I was a business genius.
Paul Tanner
Brighton
*
Skeleton Leaf
Lace wing tickling
the sodden ground,
disrobed from
the bough last autumn.
A lover's clothes
strewn on wet grass,
made of finest
French needlework.
Veins that once
pumped life,
now brittle as old bones
miniature the shape of
a winter tree,
wrapped in gauze,
unabashed.
A lace doily
cleared from
summer's abundant table.
Matter gives way to space
until only
a web of beige,
fortresses the
passage of time.
When I return to the earth
may I leave a trace as
delicate as this.
Emma Webb
Sheffield
*
Audubon
In the dawn light, a hawk circles
The tallest pine
Before settling on its very tip.
Balancing, it sticks its handsome
Head beneath its wing to preen.
Then sitting up tall, it shows its
Massive chest, the red of which
Matches the sunrise over the Atlantic,
In the pose Audubon was after
When he aimed his rifle.
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, Florida, USA
*
Inventory
Dog-eared, creased, and frayed
stands the same copy of Manley Hopkins
for five years—no, eight, or maybe ten
even as its shelf has moved closer
to the rest rooms and cooking titles.
So I will take it, pay the price
the sombre ink still indicates,
as no sticker obliterates the print
that suggests some retail revision,
though time equals inflation.
But, of course, Father Gerard’s
rhythms have had no chance to spring
due to consumers’ choice, neglect.
Though the cashier will give no discount
for browsers’ wear, I will pay the full—
modest—millennial cost to bend the pages
and fold the cover, perhaps even
deface any number of leaves
with pencilled notes over which,
the sweat, the oil of ownership,
the released words may leap.
John Zedolik
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
*
December 2020 (97 editions in total)
45th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Little Bear Cabin - Richard Heller.
Cafe - Michael Jennings.
Happiness - David McLintock.
How Could I Not Dream of You? - Mike McNamara.
Wild Wood of Youth - Lynn Munn.
Ruminator (adjudicator) - David Pike.
Plenty of Time for Perfection - David Sapp.
Flannel White - John Short.
remembrance day shift - Paul Tanner.
Gunfire in the Woods - Mary Williams.
Neanderthals - Ron Yazinski.
Poem for my Seventieth birthday - Ron Yazinski.
*
Little Bear Cabin
The fresh fire
melts the stale snow
from the cabin roof.
The long fingers
of icicles—
drip, drip—
lose their grip
on the eaves.
The alpenglow
gladdens us
through the old-growth
cork pine and hemlock
as much as our cups
of white jasmine tea
as much as the cold
clean wind
on our faces
out here on the slippery
porch of our middle age.
Richard Heller
Pittsburgh, USA
*
Café
It’s nothing posh despite the accent over the “e”,
a cup of tea, a bun, the clink of crockery,
the coming and going, a seat by the window.
It’s a democratic gathering, but the pin-striped suit
might elicit a stare or two; especially from young George
taking it all in from the depths of his pushchair.
The pair in the corner don’t see anything but each other,
and their chips have grown cold. De rigueur here
is old, faded and drab – not a place for the crooked finger,
drizzle has nothing to do with the cooking,
it’s the weather in the street outside;
a sushi bar is probably an upstart rival to Mars.
Here is proper food – eggs, bacon, beans, tomatoes and toast –
a wide enough menu in this unconscious example of humble living.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
Happiness
Happiness comes up the path
And knocks cheerily,
3 quick raps, then steps back,
Beams at the unwary answerer,
Still in t-shirt and slippers,
Beams right in their teased eyes -
And offers the gift,
So beautifully wrapped,
So gilded, so promising,
So always the same when opened,
Discontent – woven round
With all its sparkling finery.
Personally,
I no longer get up
From my chair,
However long or loud
The dog barks.
David McLintock
Liverpool
*
How Could I Not Dream of You?
How could I not dream of you
as once you were,
modestly walking
on today’s unshared streets;
Venetian hair reflecting
yesterday’s sun,
or lying beside me
as once you did,
your long fair lashes
sheltering the bluest of eyes?
Mike McNamara
Newport, Gwent, South Wales
*
Wild Wood of Youth
Wild wood of youth that sheltered
Squirrel, mole and badger,
Torn apart by bulldozer,
Beaten down by tractor.
On its grave, players now disport their girth
Nimbly on tomb of celandine, of willowherb
Shrilling love-fifteen, fifteen love,
Into the silence left by chaffinch, left by dove.
Where owl outstared the moon,
And with his haunting cry
Made lovers blood run cool,
Now, teacups rattle in the afternoon.
Lynn Munn
London, NW6
*
Ruminator (adjudicator)
There’s a lot to be said
about saying things,
and it makes sense
to get words off your
chest, whilst in memory
rather than later redacting text
thro’ fear of offending
those waiting to be
offended,
the routinely affronted
wait in the wings
to specifically hear views
they decide not to approve
or wish to hear,
righteous to the point
of no point at all,
censoring, diluting,
reducing,
looking for words
to expunge from the
wall.
David Pike
Camelford, Cornwall
*
Plenty of Time for Perfection
I’ve heard death is mandatory
but I live with the necessary
dollop of illusion, without
an acute awareness of my end.
Certainly, the topic is glum,
like religion, sex or politics,
not the most polite conversation.
It’s untenable to dwell upon death
as part of my routine, office gossip,
idle banter over Sunday brunch,
though I’m sure someone somewhere
has made death their theology.
Death is an annoying neighbor
when life is governed by disease,
starvation, bullets and bombs.
The cultivation of enemies,
the enumeration of slights,
is dependent upon our immortality.
We treat each other as if any
transgression made this afternoon
will certainly be forgiven tomorrow.
There’s plenty of time to rectify
flaws, smooth out rough edges.
There’s plenty of time for perfection.
With each passing notion of death,
my intentions must be pure.
I’ll live a fuller life. Well, maybe.
I’ll accomplish less, but that’s good
for my overall disposition and the planet.
I’ll appreciate you more efficiently.
I’ll give affection frequently and freely.
I’ll make love with a simple joy,
without want, stipulation or agenda.
I’ll relax at last with death
as my steadfast companion.
David Sapp
Berlin Heights, OH, USA
*
Flannel White
My father’s journey through life
from school to war to office
was just a sequence of obedience
while others did the thinking.
No sooner home from work
than dinner finished, off to play.
Sundays at the cricket crease
the only place he wished to be.
A catalogue of parks and pitches
we were driven to on sufferance,
mum to make tea and sandwiches
in pavilions with other wives;
me enduring vistas of boredom
for a ritual as slow as chess.
But when I notice coloured kit
these days on television screens
I pine for lazy, esoteric afternoons
of flannel white and flying cork,
striped deckchairs - summer sun
long silences exploding into action.
John Short
Liverpool
*
remembrance day shift
it hits 11
so you turn the music off
the queue ceases its millipede shuffle
the beeping of the scanners
stops
and you bow your heads
at your checkouts …
someone in the street
blows a trumpet,
the brass cries wafting
through the automatic doors
and into the shop …
you think of what your grandad told you, of that time in Paris
when the ambulance fell on its side as a shell hit the road. “the
buildings didn’t fall like dominoes,” he said, “they curled inwards
like burned papers, and I was looking at them upside-down
through the smashed window of the ambulance with my leg –”
OI! this big bloke
slams his hands down on your counter.
AM IN A FAKIN HURRY, YER KNOW! he warns you
glowing bright red
with conviction,
glowing
as red as
the stripes
on his union jack t-shirt.
Paul Tanner
Brighton
*
Gunfire in the Woods
Walking through woods I hear
rifle shots cracking the air;
a hubbub of rooks
protesting.
I stay away.
Fear is what it says. Be fearful.
The rooks agitate the sky.
What if it comes closer?
Echoes of other places, other times.
In the mind’s undergrowth
a refugee crawls through the woods
dragging his tattered wings;
a child opens his beak to be fed.
The rooks circle and call,
circle and call.
Mary Williams
Market Drayton
*
Neanderthals
Long before science proved it,
A noted anthropologist claimed
The reason he placed Neanderthals on the human family tree
Had less to do with any research he had done,
Than with the music he had listened to in college.
Those Woodstock era songs of brotherhood and harmony,
Shaped his thinking that all men are equal,
Part of the same family.
Having grown up with the same soundtrack,
I too sang songs of love and kindness,
Feel good tunes that encouraged judging others only by how much they give away;
Though, to be honest, beggars still make me uneasy;
Through protest songs about Viet Nam,
I learned to hate war so much,
I considered moving to Canada;
Though now my pension is funded
By the profits of defense contractors;
And with all those quasi-religious hits,
I cared less about the lyrics in praise of some comic- book god
Than I did about those transcendent solos
That I jammed along with on air guitar,
Realizing over time that what really moved me
Was not the speed at which the notes were played,
But rather the sweet spaces between the notes,
Like the silences before and after Om,
The silences only geniuses master.
Like that anthropologist,
I can easily accept the Neanderthal DNA in me.
It might explain the way I dance.
Though I might not be happy if these brothers moved next door,
Spoiling my nights
With the flutes they had fashioned from their father’s bones.
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, Florida
*
Poem for my Seventieth Birthday
Instead of a card my brother texts a picture
Of the house next to our boyhood home.
After decades of neglect,
Simple rot has gotten the better of it.
The front porch has crumbled;
The plywood over the windows has popped;
And the bulk has come down like a drunk on one knee looking for his keys.
It’s anyone’s guess if it will hold this position long enough to be hauled away.
With it will go the memories of the ancient woman who lived there,
Who, as far as I could tell, never laughed,
Even when as a teenager I was in her home nightly,
Volunteered by my parents to tend her coal furnace.
Every cold evening, after dinner,
I would creak open her outside cellar door,
Careful not to prick my fingers on slivers,
And descend into the gloom of a dingy bulb;
There I scuffled along the dirt floor, bowing my head to avoid the low ceiling,
Until I stood between the bin and the furnace
Where I shovelled coal and removed ashes.
Usually, for the fifteen minutes I was there,
I would hear her shuffling around her kitchen above me,
Singing gospel songs at the top of her creaky voice,
Praising Jesus for this and thanking Him for that;
But every so many evenings,
She would stop in mid- hallelujah,
As if suddenly aware of my scraping the bottom of the furnace.
Then she would be silent, listening as I spilled ashes into a can,
Before clanking shut the hot metal door.
My father told me she had had a son about my age
Who, decades ago, died during a high school football game.
As I worked, I wondered if the noise I was making
Brought him back to her.
As for me, being mistaken for a ghost
Made my head throb;
Though, probably, it was more from the mold and ash dust,
And I needed to breathe the crisp night air.
As I closed the cellar door behind me,
She finished her “Hallelujah.”
Ron Yazinski
Click to: Return to Home Page
*
September 2020 (96 editions in total)
44th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Removal - Gary Beck
The Caveman - Holly Day
Disraeli's Statue - Will Daunt
Thaw - Michael Jennings
Everyday is like Sunday - Ben Macnair
Size Nines - David Pike
We Must Rebuild - Paul Tanner
Perun, the Pole Sky God - Ron Yazinski
*
Removal
Winter winds blow harshly
on the abandoned homeless
marooned on city streets
‘til rain and snow drive them off,
no choice but to leave behind
cardboard signs imploring aid,
cardboard mattresses, cardboard blankets
decomposing from the torrent
that washes away the last hope
for primitive survival
before eradication.
Gary Beck
New York, USA
*
The Cavemen
I spent nearly a whole summer staring through the slats of the fence
at the people next door. We weren’t allowed to talk to them
because something was wrong with them, they didn’t have electricity,
they had an outhouse in the back, a pond in their yard.
Once a week, an old woman would come out of the house carrying a stack of rugs
and beat them until they were clean. I didn’t understand what she was doing
thought she did it because she was angry,
like when my mom broke glasses and pop bottles in the driveway
when she was mad.
They had kids, but they were too old for us to play with
one boy had a motorcycle, like my dad, but my dad
didn’t ever talk to the boy about his motorcycle. “They don’t have a television!”
my mom would wonder, in those days before she got so angry
she smashed up our own set, threw a boot through the screen
ended Saturday cartoons in our house for good.
I used to wonder what it was like in their house, if they had furniture
or if they slept in piles of blankets spread over the freshly-beaten rugs
drew hieroglyphs on the walls with fingers dipped in home-made paint
huddled around a roaring fire in the middle of their living room, the smoke
disappearing through rotted slats in the ceiling.
Holly Day
Minneapolis MN, USA
*
Disraeli’s Statue
L39 2AL: 3/1/2020
I’ve lost a pound or two but the fresh year’s
fortune might improve if everyone took
a new look at themselves and figured out
how to re-dress these ghosts of M & S
or H & M or B & M That bleached
kagoule who voted in this oddball tribe
slides aside to pass the mum who disowned
her dad for Wanting Out The uni-hound
in shorts has seen the green and waves towards
the bloke who snubbed the lights then flings the Vs.
Will Daunt
Ormskirk, West Lancashire
*
Thaw
It was like seeing unexpectedly
what seemed the gleam
of something lost and given up on;
something seeming to redeem
a long abandoned hope;
like a faint trickle of a thaw,
a hint of Spring
after Winter’s icy grip on your soul.
Going about household chores,
while you were showering,
beyond the forbidden door,
I’m sure I heard you singing.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
Everyday is like Sunday
The neighbours are cleaning their cars,
the third time this week.
They will never shine like this again.
The neighbours are cutting their lawns,
playing a symphony with the notes
produced by their mowers.
The Church Bells are still.
Silent.
We have the same rituals.
Read the papers.
Watch the news.
Listen to experts,
and people on Facebook, and Twitter,
spouting their incendiary views.
We take the government-sanctioned walk.
That brief respite from the house,
is a sanctuary.
We start conversations with former
nodding acquaintances,
and look forward to things going
back to normal
that will never really be.
Someone somewhere is playing Itchycoo Park.
No-one is playing Morrissey.
Ben Macnair
Lichfield, Staffordshire
*
Size Nines
Let them get on with it
jiggering about
making mistakes,
and whatever comes through
don’t intrude,
keep your trap firmly shut
buttoned, zipped,
because you won’t be blessed
for planting your oar in;
in fact
you’ll be seen as a meddlesome
old fart
just as you thought others
were meddlesome old farts
when you were their age,
when you were young, irritable and
obscenely green.
Now you’re just irritable
and obscene;
so don’t run amok
with an opinionated gob
take it easy
give up, you’re not up to the job,
you may be acknowledged
but thankfully not heard.
That’s the problem with ageing
you think you’ve copped the lot. . .
let’s face it
the whole thing’s absurd.
David Pike
Camelford, Cornwall
From David Pike’s books, In the Mix,
2007 & Sometime, Somewhere, Somehow, 2018.
*
we must rebuild
went in the jobcentre
and the place was gutted:
the walls stripped,
the empty desks turned over,
wires dangling everywhere.
I turned and walked back out:
I was glad the revolution was happening
but I’m too little and pretty for prison.
was halfway up the road
when three builders started chasing me.
two of them pinned me against the wall
and patted me down,
screaming “WHAT YOU TAKE? WHAT YOU TAKE?”
while the other was on the phone, saying
“SOMEONE WAS TRYNA TAKE OUR TOOLS,
WE GOT HIM THOUGH, WE GOT HIM!”
when they realised I had nothing on me
they asked “WHAT WERE YOU UP TO IN THERE?”
“looking for a job?” I squeaked, my mouth kissing brick.
turns out
the jobcentre was shut for refurbishment.
no one had told me, least of all my jobcentre advisor.
I stood face-first against the wall,
a hand to the back of my neck
while they cancelled the police.
I felt like I’d let them down.
Paul Tanner
Brighton
*
Perun, the Pole Sky God
This winter solstice
The full moon glows like a crystal ball
Illuminating my lanai;
And I think how my dead mother,
Would have loved it,
Saying it reminded her of my father’s smile.
But once again,
I wish she hadn’t been a Catholic,
That she had instead raised me in the old ways
So that I could believe the North Star was the Eye of Perun,
The Slavic god of oaks and heavens,
Who watched over his radiant world,
With its forests and fields filled
With eternal spirits, like her and my dad;
The god who taught his people not to fear the wind,
The all night wind,
With its hoots of distant owls
And the cries of small birds that dream of owls.
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, FL, USA
Click: Return to Home Page
*
June 2020 (95 editions in total)
43rd edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Ardent Forclosure - Frank De Canio
Fashioned - Michael Jennings
Teen Years Revisited - Frank Joussen
Pig - Lynne Munn
Not So Crazy Kate - Lynne Munn
Intrinsically Bad - David Pike
Bowling Reunion - John Short
No Longer Free - John Short
A Day Away From The Circus - Paul Tanner
Murder on EBay - Ron Yazinski
*
Ardent Foreclosure
Although he brandished her a harmless gift,
it only took her seconds to disarm
him. She gave fugitive designs short shrift
through agile demonstrations of her charm.
And even though he bargained that she’d spare
his sensibilities, she drew him near
so he could feel intruding through her hair,
the hardware of her cockleshell of ear.
Her firm embrace constrained his face beside
hers with maneuvers that would scarcely spare
him. Since he couldn’t run, and still less hide,
he sighed, relieved that his designs were good,
despite the heat still hidden where he stood.
Frank De Canio
Union City, NJ, USA
*
Fashioned
Despite the care, the deftly argued case,
you still said, no, to each request,
though each reply though brief was yet polite.
No matter how my feelings were expressed,
how phrased and how precise,
your answers never slapped me down, not quite,
and so inspired another go at getting yes.
Meantime, an alchemy beyond all wit,
had used those all too frequent blows
to fashion from that hardened self-concern,
a wiser, less possessive point of view
where visceral success no longer burned
and in its place was fashioned, bit by bit
someone more accepting and more resilient too.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
Teen Years Revisited
at the parties, dance schools, school dances,
down by the river with its rocky banks,
sometimes the warm sand of the beach,
there were the couples
always busy, timelessly happy
in the breaking up – making up game
then again, there were the teens
all alone in the crowd –
“no one wanted to be them”
before they fell in love
for the first time
at the parties, dance halls, school halls,
the cool rocky river banks,
sometimes the warm, soft beach
and then, and then
everybody wanted to be
us.
(Quotation taken from Louise Glück´s poem “Midsummer”)
Frank Joussen
Erkelenz, Germany
*
Pig
There is something loveable about a pig,
Lolling in fat, fleshy folds,
Snuffling with greedy snout,
Slitted eyes with pleasure glinting,
And grunting, snorting, almost bellowing.
As a city child, my first glimpse of pig
Was of its head set on a large, blue platter,
In the window of a pork butcher;
Mouth shaped as in fixed grin
Around a ruby, rosy apple stuffed in.
With eyes agape and heart untimely shaken,
I asked my mother what had happened to the rest of him,
It would, she said, become pork cuts, ham and bacon,
Poor, poor pig, all of him broken…broken…
Lynne Munn
London, NW
*
Not So Crazy Kate
Grotesque Kate, gargoyle Kate,
Tottering along Finchley Way,
In shoes too big, heels too high,
Mini-skirt flapping ludicrously
Against an ancient thigh.
Make-up trowelled in
The rutted ruin of her skin
Clown’s lips painted round
A wide distracted grin,
Hair like crow’s nest torn
From a quivering elm in storm.
People gape as Kate sails by
But she is blind to pitying eye,
For in the twisted thicket of her mind
She has found sanctuary,
Shielded from the fiery sun
And frantic crying of the wind.
Lynne Munn
*
Intrinsically Bad
This poem
contains explicit material
and should only
be read by
persons of 18 years
of age or older
and includes many
references to things
which entice, solicit, smoulder
and are disgustingly rude,
crude, and unsightly.
Do not read
if you are of a timid, shy
or nervous disposition
because this stuff
has all of the above
with a bit more thrown in
of an erotic, suggestive
ouch elected
yaroo! - thank you
corrective, bothered,
slobbered,
chafed and bruised
nature.
So, WARNING
don’t read this poem
as it is intrinsically bad.
Oh, you already have.
© copyright David Pike, from books At Durgan, 2017
& Sometime, Somewhere, Somehow, 2018
Listen to Intrinsically Bad via YouTube, click: https://youtu.be/kVTkdzMxqQY
*
Bowling Reunion
The whole crowd’s out tonight:
perfect blazers and club ties,
veined visages, cut-glass accents,
they are a wondrous bunch
with polished spitfire elegance
a curious breath of yesterday.
Some need assistance, shuffling
to crackers and candlelight
and a confusion of cutlery.
Some struggle with names,
catch threads of conversation
half-grasped through hearing aids.
But they’re all so glad they made it
to this celebration of another year
though their aim is failing,
the score sheets a disaster zone,
woods gathering garage dust
and the jack seems permanently lost.
John Short
Lydiate, Merseyside
*
No Longer Free
You used to make me happy:
our rendezvous in the square.
I’d wait a bit then you’d appear
out of the darkness with a smile
then I’d take you to a bar
and put my arms around you
then later to bed in the old hotel.
Years on we’re still together
and I am certainly no longer free:
all effort flows away
to your needs and aspirations
but it’s good to be important to someone
and it beats the hell out of being alone.
Life and people congeal around us,
set like gelatine but it’s okay really.
I can’t imagine life without you.
John Short
*
a day away from the circus
angry in the dark
on your rented bed
after the longest shift
of your short life
too angry
to sleep
and would you believe
you take no comfort
from knowing that countless others
are in the same boat,
adrift
in this angry dark?
look around the rented room
see their hands
come out of the rented dark
and capsize your boat …
it’s your day off tomorrow.
well, today
and the lady downstairs will start blaring her tv
in a couple of hours
and you’ll be standing red-eyed at the rented window
40-odd hours without sleep
looking out at the world you rent,
fine-tuning your thoughts
down to:
‘I want my money back’
and then finally just
‘urgh’
or ‘ugg. ugg, god.’
Paul Tanner
Brighton
*
Murder on EBay
“Murder on EBay,” stated the headline.
A t first glance, because this is Florida,
I thought someone had placed a winning bid
For a hit man to do away with either
A cheating husband or his girlfriend;
Or, if the winner was, like many of my smiling neighbors,
A follower of the Prosperity Gospel,
Had him do what Jesus endorses, but does little to facilitate,
Remove a boss who stood in the way of promotion.
Instead, on reading the piece, I found it was a mundane shooting
On East Bay Street, a mile from where I live,
A street that everybody calls E-bay,
Where a drug deal had gone so bad a thirteen-year-old
Gunned down a twenty-five year-old father of two.
How have I reached the point where
I am moved more by the absurdity of the headline
Than the tragedy it tells?
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, FL, USA
*
Click: Return to Home Page
March 2020 (94 editions in total)
42nd edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
A Scorned Snail - Lynne Munn
November Sunset Over Lake Ontario - George Payne
Not a Biscuit - David Pike
He Was Here - Dr. Roger Singer
Return to Nowhere - Julia Stothard
Untethered - Julia Stothard
Some Ode - Paul Tanner
Tutorial - Ron Yazinski
*
A Scorned Snail
I am a snail and move very slowly,
Never, ever do I hurry,
Because you see, I have a house
Of shell, always to carry with me.
Humans, I suspect, at sight of me
Wonder what can my purpose be,
Except to gnaw the vegetation
Carefully nurtured in their garden.
But nature created me, as well as they,
Her’s is the law by which we have no say.
She reigns, and what she rules must prevail,
A scorned snail! yet in my wake only I
Can leave a shimmering diamond trail.
Lynne Munn
London, NW6
*
November Sunset Over Lake Ontario
She handed me the egg,
between the bones, slowly
and meticulously, and the egg,
in her fingers, if one could call
them that, reminded me of the sun
oozing below florescent indigo-
tangerine clouds with chocolate
shadows on the cheekbones of houses.
George Payne
Rochester, NY, USA
*
Not a Biscuit
Once you’d read the sub-text
wading through yards of paragraphs
and spellbinding legalise,
jargon, designed not to please
and close the eyes
of an involuntary reader,
you come across a glaring
small-print intrusion
a barbed get out of this
hidden in the depths of minutia.
‘Just sign,’ it doesn’t say
but implies
knowing the reader
will be weary and disinclined
to read anymore,
so, the ‘Accept’ button is clicked
and the package permits access to more,
with a spy buried deep within
keeping a note of the ongoing score.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
He Was Here
And then…
he was gone
he took with him
his voice
and crooked smile
his welcoming eyes
and calm purpose
to all he met
he left behind
his favorite hat
a pen for writing
a few books
and a cat and dog
that still look for him
sorrow fills in hard
the void at first
flooding cherished
memories into corners
of what remains.
Dr. Roger Singer
Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA
*
Return to Nowhere
These outskirts are tattered hems of a city
ragged and knotty, crusted with blotchy
islands of paint
where life revs up to the highs encircled
on signs lining the road
through the cemetery, north and south.
Our ambitions are wired pylon to pylon
but all routes out are snubbed by debts.
Time is local
and comfortable only
with knowing the boundaries
and spraying names on faceless walls.
The potholes mouth a welcome to rain
reflecting our faces, creased and oily
beneath the debris -
in summer, the ruts will drain to dust
as we blow along on the breeze,
returning to nowhere.
Julia Stothard
Shepperton, Middlesex
*
Untethered
Grass has overtaken the path,
the churned earth settled to maple-red
& our stream has silted smoothly
in its bed.
We no longer leap its banks.
The forest heals from us,
slips quietly away when voices
tune out against the distance.
It keeps its lips sealed
and thinks in green.
We have dried out and furled inwards,
stiff in our bones, slow streams
thinning through us.
We have become the shade
of our own shelter.
When there’s nothing left to tether us,
we craze and flake;
a scattering
that snags in the cedar, the beech,
Scots pine and silver birch.
Will we always meet back here,
gathering ourselves
in leaf?
We trust in the faintest whisper
carried amongst the vigilant trees.
Julia Stothard
*
Some Ode
what sort of job are you looking for? she asks me
and I mean
I’m here
signing on:
what are my options, exactly?
I’m a drunk pervert
so I’d like to be a politician please
but no: they’re looking for a toilet cleaner in the shopping centre.
I decline
and when she denies me help
she smiles the smile that can only be smiled
when one fulfils a quota
and this place that exists
to keep people like me off the streets
sends me out into the streets?
tis confusing:
if only 1 of the 3 GCSE’s I got were in council logic, eh?
and in these streets
a spherical woman a quarter of my age
flings her kid over a wall with a defiant cough,
the burnt vagina sky framing her in purple strings:
when did I miss the bomb drop?
even the very atoms that encase and fill us
have the whiff of the charlatan about them
and the kid has a cough, too.
Paul Tanner
Brighton
*
Tutorial
I’m so old I’ve outlived my metaphors,
Like that night in Colorado
When the multitude of stars were so bright and precise
They looked like numbers and symbols on a blackboard,
One endless equation written in a meticulous hand,
Proving that from the first flash of time,
I had to be there,
Studying that night;
Whereas, on filmy Florida nights, the few stars I can make out
Are white flakes on a blackboard, like the points of chalk
Hurled by sophomore boys
As soon as the substitute teacher turned his back.
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, FL, USA
*
Click: Return to Home Page
December 2019 (93 editions in total)
41st edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Casket - Michael Jennings.
Foxgloves - Lynne Munn.
Trees - Lynne Munn.
Expert in the Field - David Pike.
Scotland - David Sapp.
The Missing Part - Soran. M. H
Fast Journey - Soran. M. H
Ghosts - Ron Yazinski
*
Casket
Three in the morning in a hospital bed
and the name came to me.
But what process and by what clues
had the search through the chaotic files and folders
of my mind been conducted?
Had it lasted from the time
the ambulance doors closed
and I had been unable to return her wave?
And who or what had done the searching?
How kind she had been
when I had fallen in the street.
Had gratitude given life
to whatever was taking place
along the skull’s labyrinthine corridors?
Did the desire to remember
match a desire to be remembered
and, drawn and pushed,
the name had struggled
past goodness knows what obstacles
to the surface of my consciousness?
Was the name important?
Perhaps it was a hand casket
in which to keep what little I knew of her.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottingham
*
Foxgloves
School holidays were always spent
In the country with a spinster aunt.
Such bliss! to freely roam many a fragrant hour,
Among the foxgloves, dusky-pink, and tall as me,
Growing wild outside her garden, so orderly
And neat, while joy wiped clean of memory
The streets where never blew a flower.
Dear Aunt, only now long after your demise,
I suddenly and ruefully realise
Why, when I arrived you rummaged with such haste,
Through the contents of my shabby case,
So anxious to ensure no tiny, parasitic interloper
Had, unbeknown to me, covertly made the journey
From the streets, where never blew a flower.
Lynne Munn
London, NW6
*
Trees
Only the wind brushing their leaves
Moves the trees,
Anguish can fill the air
They feel no despair
Only the rain pearling their leaves
Touches the trees,
Tears can flood the ground,
They stand unmoved.
But when come storms with blast and hail,
Perhaps when bent in wild travail,
They, too, may feel some part
Of all that ravages the human heart
Lynne Munn
*
Expert in the Field
He thought he was an intellectual
elite, intuitive, respectable
and in possession
of an exceptionally keen brain
while others knowingly proclaimed,
“he was a steaming great twit.”
And from a lofty academic plain
he craned to look down his nose
on those he thought undesirable,
non-intellectuals
because he posed
there was nowhere else to go
when conversing with those who were common
or slow
they possessed little incite or wit
and annoyed in a rough uncultured way,
meanwhile others exclaimed,
“he was a steaming great twit.”
It wasn’t that he was pompous
arrogant or rude
although he could be all three
when in the right mood
and his spoken illustrations
on the minutia of
something of low significance today
was by default
and in its own way
party interesting
but people, in summary would mainly say,
“he was a steaming great twit.”
He had an opinion about anything
had an answer for everything
but did nothing
and said everyone should keep in pace
and not complain
(because he never did)
being well-off and removed
from what everyone else had to do
to survive
and at night he’d wear a deer stalker hat
and go out for a drive
and anyone who saw him surmised,
“he was a steaming great twit.”
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
From DP’s poetry book, The Strand, 2012
*
Scotland
When I arrive at clavicle, humerus,
Acromion, the view is breath-taking,
A vista nothing like the map.
Still, after thirty-some years,
I am a fortuitous Norseman,
Longboat aground upon the shore;
I discover the northern-most
Pinnacle of your back.
Here, you could be Scotland
But just south of Ben Nevis,
More hummock than summit:
Your curiously arousing scapula.
I assumed my caresses were familiar
With your bones, every curve
Of your topography, but here, oh here!
Is a delicious, neglected crest.
I’ll ascend your gentle highland tor
With fresh, audacious kisses.
David Sapp
Berlin Heights, OH, USA
*
The Missing Part?
If love can be
the dynamo of life
as most of us believe
20 springs
with all their blossoms are so many
and 20 autumns too
with all their fallen leaves,
if not in them
where else
the expression
‘I love you?’
I don’t know
whether light follows the dark
or night hides from the day
but I am certain that
both are perfect together,
all those blue eyes
are marvellous,
such a clear sky
at summer dawn,
such a wide blue ocean
with all its calm blink waves,
but I wonder
where are all these desperate fishes
who lost the shore?
most poets write
their dreams
but this is different
it’s the reality within the dream.
Soran. M. H
Coventry
*
Fast Journey
You were a minute late.
The train left you behind,
Your poem unfinished.
You woke.
Your reading of the stories of rivers
Was interrupted.
Night fell.
Not acquainted with the deeps of
Oceans
You desired to know the mysteries of
the sunset,
Of the yellowing of leaves.
Soran. M. H
*
Ghosts
There are too many ghosts.
First, there’s the couple who built this house,
And then that of their daughter
Who lived here before us,
All flitting from room to room,
As if looking for lost keys.
And then there are those of their parents and grandparents
Who haunted them,
All dressed in period clothes and worn shoes
Following the first group around,
Hanging on their every word
Just in case their names are mentioned.
Lately, I’ve started seeing them down town,
Following me in legions,
Without even the courtesy of pretending to look in shop windows when I turn around,
So that Plant Street resembles a busy day at Disney World,
When you can’t see the sidewalk because of the crowd.
All of them jostling, quietly studying me,
As if they expect me to say or do something important, like mention their names.
At first I admit I was scared,
Chills up and down my neck and spine.
But I’ve grown used to them.
Now when the dog grows restless at three in the morning
And I awake, I bravely smile and wave.
At which, like hungry children watching a fat man eat an ice cream, they stare
Ron Yazinski
Winter Garden, Florida
*
Click: Return to Home Page
*
September 2019 (92 editions in total)
40th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
George Street South, SP2 7BQ - Will Daunt.
Bourn Bridge, CB21 6AN - Will Daunt.
Underground - E A M Harris.
Speechless - John Miller.
An Invitation to Your Wedding - Lynne Munn.
The Mohawk - George Cassidy Payne.
Warning Device - David Pike.
Final Phase - John Short.
*
George Street South
SP2 7BQ
We got off slightly, our road a footnote
beyond the city’s bandage, twenty-five
years after Meadow and George Street went
under the knife - two lags left limp for dotage.
Hardly Berlin - but the hacking asphalt
bustled and flickered through our first three years -
Churchill’s Way, perhaps. Before leaving, one
wayward trip wheeled us up on the city
side, and our terrace’s score of siblings.
Who lived there then, and knew the other street?
Will Daunt
Ormskirk
*
Bourn Bridge
CB21 6AN
The science park is barred and filmed and partitions
shape those fields we’d cross. Here’s rugby
country and there are some chirpy Baltic
women, bent over veg.,
organically.
Permissive paths have occupied the wood
and the World Famous Cafe puts up a bund
of cemented wire across the gap once
called a Welcome, while the listed half-baked
shack next door is swallowed by a bury-
built school for kids who pay to learn by trees.
Will Daunt
*
Underground
the men of the mine, swarthy and smiling;
the pick handed down from great-great-grandpère;
an eye that understands the ore;
tock, tock, tock of pick on rock;
water, cold and fusty;
dust;
air;
pale insects scurry from a lantern;
tick, tick, tick of hammer;
the smell of bat droppings;
tock, tock, tock from far ahead;
cold sweat;
scratched boots;
the perfume of wet ore;
the perfume of its value;
tick, tick, tick – drips in the distance;
incline of the roof;
roughness underfoot;
rough timbers;
lamplight knocking on darkness;
tock, tock, tock of someone’s watch.
E A M Harris
Bridgwater, Somerset
*
Speechless
Father, we had no consecrated ointment,
no rites for the observance of your death.
When you were grimacing with pain
as your life ebbed, we—your family—uttered
no consolatory prayers, could think
of nothing that would help any of us.
We didn’t prop your head with cushions
to encourage last words
though I had precedents enough
in literature for memorable deaths.
We knew Goethe’s last request—
more light, more light—
and what friends did for Franz Schubert,
hushing his cries with pious ministrations,
soothing him with scripture.
Should we have known some benediction
to recite when the last feeding tube,
the last polygraph was being unplugged
from what had been your life support?
Only my younger sister thought to croon
your boyhood nickname in Hungarian,
stroking your damp forehead, while I stood
stricken speechless and numb, father,
not even reaching for your hand.
Here, now, with these words
is it really better late than never?
John Miller
Lexington, Virginia, USA
*
An Invitation to Your Wedding
I will be shrieking round suburbia,
Hoping it is not too late
And you will hear.
Race up and down each quiet road,
Startling all the sleepers
And the moribund.
Howl, howl round trees provoking
Cushioned cats to sir and stretch,
Dimly remembering.
But if, like leaf fall in October,
My cries too shall be unheard,
Sadly then, I leave you to your sepulchre.
Lynne Munn
London, NW
*
The Mohawk
My world is concealed
under the Mohawk’s
waters, way beneath the
cries of geese in flight and
rockslide scars of slippery,
olive skinned hemlocks
smeared in October’s maple,
blood- red moss, rushing
past my descendant’s statues.
George Cassidy Payne
Rochester, NY, USA
*
Warning Device
Festering in a corner
the affronted, wounded
offended
member for January to December
was about to explode, pondered a bit
then did
off blew the lid
showering remnants of life
clothes, former abode
and other indiscernible
bits
to various areas of the world
where they lay as unrecognisable fragments,
not part of the whole
picture thing.
Nearby a monkey on a bicycle
pushed a bell, a warning device
that sounded
with a ring.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
From: The Strand, poetry book by David Pike, published 2012
*
Final Phase
They are giraffe-tall
and allergic to silence,
have never heard
of multiplication tables,
they stand aside
as I pass - say Sorry.
A visual reminder
of teachers perhaps?
I might as well sport
bargain basement shoes,
a beige windjammer
then realize I can play
the part without props:
this lined exterior
declares to everyone
I'm in the final phase
John Short
Lydiate, Liverpool
Click: Return to Home Page
* * *
June 2019 (91 editions in total)
39th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order
* * *
Poem Index
Grove Seasons - Richard Dinges, Jr.
Uncle David - Michael Jennings.
The old man in the cage - Sean Lause
A Gift in Winter - Lynne Munn
Divorce - Lynne Munn
The Gogs - David Pike
Unusual and Dangerous - John D. Robinson
*
Grove Seasons
Tree leaves packed dense
filter sunlight,
my eyes dilated
in shadows. Leaves
fail, shed into
brittle piles that mark
my steps with bitter
cackles, reveal
branches, dark frames
between stained glass
panes of pale sky.
Snow piles over
limbs, reflect sun
to blind me in
a gentle spray
of crystals. Dark buds
erupt into green
shade, block sunlight
again and I cool
into a damp earthen
Richard Dinges, Jr.
Walton, NE, USA
*
Uncle David
When uncle David came the chances were
he’d brought something to be altered –
a shirt collar needing to be turned,
a pair of trouser shortened.
He sat in our living room,
drank a cup of tea and chatted
in his deep easy-going voice,
swapping family news and other matters
while mouther worked the treadle
and the Singer clicked and clattered.
With the alteration snipped free of the machine
he’d be off on the bike he’d left against the wall.
This was poverty that didn’t bite too deep:
it clothed us in a dignity that no one knew they wore.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
The old man in the cage
It is Sunday. The
old man in the cage
is wheeled through the town again.
His lips tremble with violations.
There must have been a time when he was young.
He signatures the wind
with words
they cannot decipher. He is no one.
Though some say he knows when time will end.
His face is a map of sins and visions.
The citizens baptize
their cars, their souls
as white as the illusion of innocence.
They toss him mirrors and laughter.
He shows them rage and the seat of his pants.
He is the sum of all
their ages,
guilty of a crime he can’t remember.
At sunset they return him to his cave
where he’ll remain ‘till they need him again
to preen their jaded dream of being gods.
Sean Lause
Bluffton, Ohio, USA
*
A Gift in Winter
Solitary, creamy-yellow, full blown rose,
There is surely a lapse in your memory
To make you bloom like this in January.
Flaunting your delicate beauty through days
Dank and drear with flutterings of snow,
When you should have rusted and died
Like your kindred, long, long ago.
Each fragrant petal fully open
Blows undefiled by winter’s thrust,
Beauty so brave, so flawless,
Amazes eyes grown used to dreariness,
Uplifts the spirit driven low by sunless
Days, and revives a sinking trust in nature,
The magical and eternal conjuror.
Lynne Munn
London, NW
*
Divorce
When the last leaves of autumn
Snatched by wilful wind,
Lie like shredded sunset
On the grass,
Will they remember spring
Before they pass,
Under footprint and snow
Into the crust of earth?
When all my future days
From yours are severed,
Finally and forever,
Will they remember spring
As documents are passed
From hand to legal hand,
And when our case is closed
What then? Will we shrivel?
Lynne Munn
*
The Gogs
A sickly-sweet odour of cutting oil
filtered through a hedgerow
oozing from an overflow
that bordered a workshop
of industrial noise;
it was a cloying smell
that lingered in the nostrils
of a small boy
crouched on a muddy track
peering intently into a shallow
backwater stream
that meandered betwixt, between
and down past The Lamb.
A small jam-jar
rested on the ground
filled with aquatic fauna
and a dazzle of bright water,
liquid that deflected light
Schlieren style
as flickering rays
filtered through an array of trees.
Two sticklebacks swam
in the close confines
of the ex-jam jar,
magnificent creatures,
silver, red, with a touch of
gold.
The boy looked for another,
where small fishes swim,
totally enthralled, taking it in,
relaxed in his skin. . .
before becoming old.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
Unusual and Dangerous
I didn’t know what I
was looking for
and I began
looking in some of
the most unusual
and dangerous of
places and people:
high life
low life
no life:
I searched
all over,
found nothing
that meant
anything:
I grabbed a pen
and started
scribbling, not
knowing what
else to do.
John D. Robinson
Hastings, East Sussex
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* * *
March 2019 (90 editions in total)
38th edition as a webzine, see below.
Poets listed in surname alphabetical order.
* * *
Poem Index
Dictate – Gary Beck
Vermin – Holly Day
Old Crocker – Michael Jennings
American Beauty – George Cassidy Payne
Low Rider – David Pike
Roughing It – Fabrice B Poussin
Foundry – John Timothy Robinson
Cottage Song – Roger Singer
Unskilled – Ian C. Smith
*
Dictate
Statistically speaking
most humans
prefer to be told
rather than asked
to do this or that
at the behest of someone
rarely concerned
with the needs of the people.
Gary Beck
New York, USA
*
Vermin
I’m sorry
I think to the cockroaches that squish under my boots
as I walk home along the roaring breakers of ocean surf
on a thin strip of sidewalk crumbling slowly to sand. In the darker shadows
cat-sized rats scurry over concrete pilings, carrying greasy chip bags
hamburger wrappers and bits of rotting fruit in their mouths
claiming the fetid remains of the day for a midnight feast.
Years before, these rats and roaches would have been in hiding
in the ramshackle brick houses and empty warehouse spaces that used
to line this part of town, but now that all those old buildings are gone
and the new buildings, mostly condos, are too brightly lit for vermin
the rats and the roaches have all come down to the beach. The new condo owners
might have chased away the junkies and the whores
and the homeless drunks with their overflowing shopping carts
but the rats and the roaches are here to stay.
Holly Day
Minneapolis MN
*
Old Crocker
Old Crocker brought us coal.
His blackened, scary face
had bulging bloodshot eyes
which stared below a greasy cap.
From lorry to his leather-aproned back
he heaved each sack and humped it
down the concrete path
in battered blakey-studded boots,
which as he thudded through,
struck sparks,
until the thunder of black fuel
tumbling in the bunker.
Such was the fearsome ogre
who brought us warmth in winter.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
*
American Beauty
Is mermaid legs of
silk noodles and storm
trooper boots. It’s pant
less. A hemmed blouse
of Amazonian orchids.
Tattooed neck. Marine
haircut. A chair made
of wolf pelts. Dressed as
a lemon meringue pie.
Drinking mushroom
tea and giggling at stars.
George Cassidy Payne
Rochester, NY, USA
*
Low Rider
Opt me out
of anything spontaneous, spectacular
or rash,
but don’t let me stop you
having a bash
on the scariest rides
that thrill making engineers
design and provide
for fun seeking fun seekers -
persons who enjoy a thrill
to show they’re alive
though nearly being killed,
and queue for the privilege.
It’s their bag you see
to be at the peak of anxiety
screaming out loud –
but leave me out,
I’ll be taking a step back
to realign my inner self,
addressing a wealth
of calm idiosyncrasies.
David Pike,
Swindon, Wiltshire
*
Roughing It
A rough dress forgotten, designed for a lady, worn by
a mother who never took much to the traits of stars.
Modelling hands of ruby nails and soft lotions, bare
no likeness to the digits crevassed by cold and rain.
Mouths needed feeding, food to be planted
and dirt soiled the folds of a skin still trying to be young.
No time for jolly waltzes in the dusty, musky ballroom
only a moment to turn from oven to table at work.
Eyelashes faded, braids unravelled with the passing days
the make-up hardened to become cement in a tight jar.
When death came at last beauty was allowed anew
she lay still rosy cheeks, peaceful under deep foundation.
The little girl had dreamed of a cover glamour shot
success indeed; that it is the last memory of her.
Fabrice B Poussin
Rome, Italy
*
Foundry
When I first saw the place one summer
it looked like someone dropped a bomb.
Through a chain-link fence
sheet metal siding charred black as coal
hung on steel girders.
From the car window
you could only look through one end
where furnace number nine made silicon.
When they tapped, a fiery glow exploded,
split darkness in a shower of volcanic light.
Waiting in the gravel parking lot
after dad’s shift,
the car was an oven of three o’clock heat.
They walked from the small building
covered in black steel-dust
like old photographs of miners.
Covered with fine filings,
this dust that resembled glitter
inside through a shaft of light,
you cleaned from your nose an hour after shift.
Black snot. Black spit.
Steel was in their blood.
Fifty years, my father worked
through changing names, collective bargaining,
a strike, an employee buy-out.
Lines on his face and in his hands
were other stories.
He drove almost an hour every day to work.
one direction,
strung electrical wire,
checked switches, relays, transistors.
Sunflower seeds and cigarette buts on the plunging station floor.
Mess hall cuss and days of jokes.
Once in a while someone brought food.
Talk of mortgages, political snares.
One summer on furnace number two,
Miller looked at me and said,
“Welcome to Hell.”
Everybody just wanted a better life.
Many years later
one of them was pulled over;
a rumor of cocaine in his trunk.
Prison.
After all this time,
here and there they fall,
felled by life;
alcohol, heart disease and cancer.
John Timothy Robinson
Gallipolis Ferry, WV, USA
*
Cottage Song
I remember shadows
and the long arms of strength.
I see smiles and pain
seasons passing.
Voices over a river
one I’m familiar with -
thoughts provide a healing,
of scars no longer visible.
I recall the aroma of lilacs
in the morning,
dew covering canvas awnings
and red wing blackbirds
heading to the tidal basin.
Roger Singer
Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA
*
Unskilled
I have an apartment lease to offload, need a foxhole
after another upheaval in the hum of these days,
discovery, escape, possibility, blood fizzing.
I recognise the canny suit who responds to my ad,
taking me back to the cages of earlier restless times.
He was my boss when I quit, storming out offended
by tactless remarks criticising a distressing call,
a medical emergency halting sweaty work.
No phones in pockets. Work scarce. Bosses ruled.
I had vowed to find another job before day’s end.
He remembers me, an emotional boy-father
of an injured child, who showed up the next morning.
Smug, compassionate, I couldn’t tell back then,
he assumed I would retract my notice, was shocked
I landed a job that day I told him where to stick his.
He wants the apartment for his student daughter.
I mention my language studies, enjoy his surprise again,
omit shameful wreckage bobbing in life’s wake,
the married girlfriend, cheap drama like a bad movie.
We all want our hazardous lives to turn out magical.
Ian C Smith
Sale, Vic, 3850, Australia
*
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