Serious Intent - QueenSpark Poetry Anthology 2

Introduction

This anthology was, at first, intended to be a sequel to the now popular Poetry, QueenSpark’s first collection of verse.

Serious Intent still is a sequel, but as it grew it became evident that it was to be an anthology of greater scope, while keeping true to the excellence of the first anthology.

Many hours of hard and dedicated work by QueenSpark volunteers has produced what, we hope, will be an entertaining and moving addition to the anthologies of local poetry from the Brighton area. But Serious Intent means more than just that; it’s about accessibility and the right of everyday people like us to be published and read. Almost everyone at QueenSpark has a story to tell, whether it be through verse, short story or life history, and the growing list of QueenSpark publications and the writing groups at QueenSpark prove that people want to read what we have to say.

QueenSpark is non-profit making and, although it may sound like a bit of cliché, we write and publish for the love of it. Please enjoy this book of Serious Intent.

Moods

Valerie Croft

Our young poets
share love’s lusts
joyous griefs.

I promenade
by the moody coloured sea
searching old lamps for old
but rheumy eyes
overlook
stroke youthful bodies.

I sigh for the unattainable
as though Time’s telling and claws
never drained ruby lips
nor scarred ugly.

Aphrodite

Shirley Beckett

By the pigeon squawking square
quiet the dark corner holds
a bowl of apples
the skins’ dull crimson gleams
green and fills…
Courbet

Cezanne
faceted bright
yellow glow
lined against air
of umber shadow
tumble the blue shade cloth
for the bathers’ picnic.

Green by green
on choppingboard;
frail from all night
appledrop sound
I peel
cinnamonmix…
“Good morning, Paris”.

A Version For The Modern Audience

Nick Sweet

All time being eternally present,
Sweeney, man with a past,
Drives on into an unreal, theoretical future,
England’s twentieth-century version of Don Juan
(Generously tattooed, with head shaved and all).
The road a winding tale
Thickly plotted with possibilities;
Inscrutable pleasures wrestling the speedo’s arm,
Drawing him to them;
The map a dotted dream,
A metaphor prefiguring the route
Of his venal days
And vertical nights in images
Reminiscent of clotted cream.
The statue destiny has marked out
For the purposes of ushering in the end,
Reveals Queen Victoria licking her lips of stone.

Post-Modern Violence Epic

Danny Birchall

Aha! I see
You have a gun:
Well done!
But me,
I have the image of a gun,
Bigger, better, cooler
And way more
Cinegenic than yours.

Quick-cut; Bang!
You’re dead.
Your last words
Weren’t very cool
You sort of said “ugh!”
And slumped into a pool
Of your own blood,
In which I put
My cigarette out
For the benefit of the camera.

A Little Something Not So Important

Steven Gilligan

Looking out at the grass
and the trees,
I can see the shades
of the year returning.
Not that it really
matters, it’s just
a little something
that’s not
so important.

Supermarket

John Greenwood

Machines
are singing
everywhere.

Pillow Talk

Valerie Croft

The Doctor explained to the bride:
“Move up and down if you want to
enjoy sex.”
Eager if inexpert
I tried.

The bridegroom snarled:
I did not know what ‘haws’ meant
although
I had heard of Lord Haw Haw
the infamous enemy of World War Two.

My husband spoke a second time:
“Move your arse.”

I thought: “I wish
you would make up your mind.
Thirteen years ago you told me to lie still.”

White Noise Album

Gerald Fiebig

your words in my ear in short circuit
always out of sync with my monochrome dreams
the other half of our bodies gone deaf
life after stroke
of luck with your breath on the line
suffocating in static after metrified minutes
this phonecard contains two separate 100 unit tracks
our skins separated into chromed mono tapes
our lips moving mute in the white noise
voice-reduced by dolby stereo to keep all frequencies clear
for capital radio FM

Extension Of The Principle Of The Short Shock Treatment
(Siberia)

Sonja Ctvrtecka

Short shock treatment
tramping minus 20;
simply life
jumped into the unspeakable
shock lasting into
the inevitable;
death off the thermometer.

Victoria Station

Danny Birchall

Passing through
And I can’t lose
This hunger in my belly
To move.

Spinning, I’m lost
And anything can happen
In this place.
Everyone’s a stranger
And I could fall in love
With the glimpse of a face.

Passing through, I can’t shake
This hunger, can’t slake
My thirst, can’t take
My fill:
I can’t stand still.

Dog On A Train

John Greenwood

Sometimes,
the twisting cord of world
snapped, and darkness
rushed in, screaming, forever.
I cowered among the fag-ends
and chewing-gum and I was
unable to look away.
A chain was around my neck,
pulling me towards the voided space.

Steppe

Tricia Turner-Savage

Castaways, the wild, high birds
besotted by the wind
reflections from the deep earth’s crystal
where only gloomy night can bloom.
Drifters of the wasted air
exhaled by strange girls, caught out by sleight of hand
through the ring of defiant iron and spur.
Moist eye of starlight, keenly cut.
Forgotten shadows of a day in a marriage bed,
can you not come out to play sweet sister.

Find horses for me, gather up the mane,
the flowing hair, a gift of tendons
To a spirit half wildness half truth
Ah! take me out… leave me…
who cares about the pravda of it all.
Lean hearts in even leaner bondage of the steppe.
Echo me down valleys, reach out, that moon
is as close as a harlot to her mother.

Alter my heart ransack its vital organ, eat it raw with an onion.
So, call me out again, with a smile as bright as an icon,
bury me with kisses of patterned ice.
Store me like an ample red apple in the barrel of distance,
my friend, I shall taste the sweeter for it.

Apparition

Nick Osmond

At the turning of a woodland path
she appeared
standing in a patch of sunlight

Fish

Valerie Croft

In the Indian Ocean
In fifty five
on the ship
‘S.S. Otranto’ P. & O. Line
renowned for riding stormy seas
seated at lunch
through a porthole
a flying fish
landed near my plate.

The vicar next to me
leaned over, pulled the fish to him:
“Manna from heaven.”
He raised a laugh.

I noticed mostly that a priest
stole my fish.

A Sea Town Morning (1950)

Roger Lindsey

Each morning the eight o’clock siren would wail like a mournful ghost,
over the wet slate roofs and around crooked chimney pots.
In Bill’s Cafe the steam would be up frosting the windows
the rattle of tea cups and coughing Woodbine conversations.
A gaggle of giggling girls click clacking by on stilted heels
chattering of last night’s backseat cinema romances,
of hopeful hopes to come.
Misty rain runs down gutters and fish paper fag packet pavements
the discarded War Cry left by some beer sodden disbeliever from the
previous night’s hazy revelry.
And the face of the Jolly Sailor runs rain tears.
A dusty old collier leaves harbour bound for some northern port
gulls wheeling and screeching in protest.
In Clarence Row curtains are drawn back with some reluctance
and cats are let in.
The wet milkman valiantly tries to whistle,
“Happy days are here again,”
but he is no match for the raucous radio with its early morning
repertoire howling forth from number three.
The town begins to greet the new day.

Desire And Blood – a dialogue

Glyn Morrow

Feel me stretching, displaying my armpits
I am contained, thick and thin
Hear me trumpeting, bold as brass
I am a river, inside the earth
Smell my breath, odour of release
I am the heart’s emissary
See me opening, wide as a mouth
I am the blue of the flame
Catch me falling, seeking, finding
I am red as fire on your golden skin
Watch me sleeping, turning, sighing
I am the river
inside the soaked earth

Orange Woman

Jan Walsh

I am an orange woman
dissolved into palest white
a syruped plum begun
uneaten, discarded, unripe
I am a velvet voice
now a breathless whisper
a candle snuffed out
long before the light
I am a figurine
broken into pieces
a frothing sea-horse
churned into a modest wave
I am a jewel in the spirit
lost from sight

I am the looking glass shining
with the reflection of your mind.

Gassed

Sonja Ctvrtecka

They waited in their
protective clothing
for the order to advance;
they checked the seams
against the gasses
that showed in their
future children’s
mutilated faces.

The Angel’s Flight

Beryl Fenton

“And God said, Let there be light.”
Genesis 1:3

When light was first uttered,
an angel was shocked by
his shadow, which fluttered
and swam on dry ground.
In frenzy it followed
the seraph who tried to
escape, as it hollowed
and swelled, and finally died, due
to night.

Where the furies
are found, it is buried.

Dreaming

Shirley Beckett

Dreaming fabrics a fantasy;
dancing a shaft of light
you pass through the shaded hours
night to day to blue
bright to dim to grey.
I see moon trail your hair
weaving cirrus… dream birds
caught in the web as flying spiders spin
mothing the cloth.

Weft of birch bows blown
to threads to leave the silver
for a hammock humming to indigo sleep
as clouds rock, holding the wind.

Your feet skim the shallows,
tread the pale shells where oysters hide
I’d gather, open, slide… the swan
invisible bears the net away.

I tread the damp grass of your absence
fetching to you a spectrum.

My Grandmother’s Piano

John Tatum

In my Grandmother’s front parlour,
where rarely a footfall
or disturbance of the air
would shiver the heavy leaves
of the aspidistra,
a polished black piano waited
while each season ran its course
beyond the curtained window.

The long-locked lid
hid the yellowing keys inside.

The dulled candlesticks,
flat against the piano’s body,
held stubs of blackened candle,
hard and cold.

What metronome for stillness
could I choose?
For that was what the room held,
stillness. The stillness following
the careful locking of a door.

Caretaker

Nyk Irvin

My care has been taken over by doctors,
you aren’t janitor here any more.
“Have you taken your pills love?”
Waiting for reaction, recovery,
resurrection.
I am not yours any more.
So you continue – tra la la,
cup of tea.
More pills, more pills,
hand over my pumping heart,
it is sick – no need to worry,
it’s a surgeon’s job – no feelings here,
no pain, no hole, just stitch, stitch, stitch.
Like a cat in a box, could be
dead by morning,
we’ll see, we’ll see.

Unhappy Coffee

Steven Gilligan

She was stargazing
into a little plastic
cup of coffee in
the reception area
of the visitor’s prison.
After a while, she
tasted the coffee,
it did not taste good
and she gracefully
spat her mouthful
back into the
little plastic cup.
She waited for her
friend to come out,
and the tea looked
a little more tasty,
so she walked over
to the drinks machine
and got a little
plastic cup of tea.
She sat back down
and sipped a bit.
It tasted worse than
the coffee.

Walt

Glyn Morrow

Of oneself he sang, bright devil.
I imagine the barge of his body forging across the great sea
of the American road, when the field met the road
in a dusty vibrant merging, and a man
could walk anywhere in strong boots and loosened tie.

On promontories he stood, all his face seeing, seeing,
the ocean rolling on, cutting through time, breaking up space,
carrying flotsam, spray, shark and ship
along on its back, its broad bearded back.

After ADAM

Simon Jenner

This year
most strange.
Love, in a morning’s uncorruptive deep,
has a year’s pent spate mollified
and some old hates deranged.

You, from the bathroom, white and dark-tucked
near, approach my gazing, half-moon-eyelashed through,
bewildered, and delightfully…

Judy’s

Simon Jenner

I slept in you
the starlight through.
And morning’s white
dispelled no light.

Impressionist Interior

John Tatum

Standing at the window, you
gaze across the rooftops
to where the sea beyond
curves to unknown horizons.

Closer worlds lurk in crevices;
where your fingers
caress dusty moss,
disturbing multitudes;

while, behind you,
as shadows lengthen,
the blurred clock
keeps only its own time.

You turn, hearing footsteps
clattering up the stairs;
sighing as the laughter
bursts into the room.

Weather

Sophie Embury
(aged 12)

The scarlet sun shines
on the frosted white snow,
nobody knows how it got there
no-one will ever know.

The pale blue rain
pitter patter on the drain pipe,
nobody knows why it came down
no-one will ever know.

The bright yellow lightning bolts
through the thundering black skies,
nobody knows why it strikes
no-one will ever know.

The scarlet sun shines
on the frosted white snow,
nobody knows how it got there
no-one will ever know.

Green Glass Only

Beryl Fenton

From this bottle bank language,
suddenly glimpsed, a nymph’s
words ebb & flow —
“Green glass, goblin, why do you
stare at them?” The nymph’s in
a poem as is the goblin, who
fervently desires her green glass beads.

Sixty years
have kept bottled this haunting poem
by a poet whose name is now sediment
on the floor of an opaque mind.

To a Friend

Beryl Fenton

I was running a bath
I was reading your letter
which the postman had delivered
a moment ago,
when a little zephyr caught the letter
and deposited it in the H2O.
Your words, penned in felt tip,
grew soggily paler,
the spaces between blossomed mauve,
but I wouldn’t say your letter’s a failure —
it now contains some purple prose.

Sam’s Eulogy

Sam Royce

Now I’m gone find only the scratchings
Of what I had meant to have done,
I did what I did how I wanted
Plus much that provoked all the fun

Remember me just for a moment
As a person that gave of his best
To leave the World he was sharing
Slightly better than when he was blessed

Seek out any part of my life-style
Enjoy what’s contained there within,
Be it poetry or prose, even humour
To broaden your face in a grin

Play my music and flood the emotions
Let them wash to the sounds of the past
Then you’ve shared in some of my happiness
Which will remain with you right to the last

Sniff the scent of the bloom in the Spring-time
As the wallflower colours the scene,
It’s a joy to behold in God’s garden
And a place I am glad to have been

Tread the path of my loves if you wish to
In the fields, by the banks, on the hay,
But be gentle if meeting my sweethearts
Their memories will not fade away

Much more would I like to have happened
But the lights dimmed to send me to sleep,
Yet I’m happy, content in my slumber,
So smile on those memories you keep.

A Chip Off The Old Block

Ivor Colledge

Amid time’s detritus
The flaking ancestral smile
Of the flint napper
Incised prehistoric layers
Bone hammer from antler outcrop
Exposed grey marble
Skinned with chalk
Calcite remains of sponges
Big as whales ballooning
In warm bathtub seas

He knew the impasse
Could split the rock
As his predecessor had known
Half a million years ago
With equal bloodymindedness
He carried on, smiling

The Velvet Screen

Jan Walsh

And so she grew another skin
not soft and lithe with tinge of veil
not really hers, not paper thin
to pick each thread of whispering wire
or feel emotions treading there

no touch of silk on velvet screen
or images of light, serene
no luscious taste on violet dew
or floating sea of floating blue

she saw no haloes, sleeping stars
no dart of light in brush of day
or ray of rainbow in red sky
no strip of hope; the promise broken.

So — she released her furied cloak
in prickled feathers with ruffled choke
she struck black clouds to inken sky
splashed dark sparks with cold desire

the bolt she struck was thundered light
she strummed the day to blast of night
and pushed down rainclouds with one sigh
below the tides turned, sea churled high

she painted dawn with hot red dust
so hot the dew, no one could touch
screened images of day ran wild
to leave the trembling air run dry

so pasted now the velvet screen —
with cool revenge of reasoned air,
as emotions leapt to bend to rules —
and cool surrender lay its head
to new hard skin on feathered bed.

Facts of Life

Valerie Croft

Four years old…
O yes she would
and yes she did ask
for almost every detail
where babies come from
stopping short to my relief
how the seeds got there.

She rolled on the bed
kicking legs in the air
eyes shining with delight
(I had to wonder
what sort of nymph I had)
“I’m going to get a seed”
she crooned
“and put it in my tummy
and I’m going to get
(she shouted triumphantly)
A Dalek.”

Wall poems by Birdman

for now, I need a prophylactic
as pre-requisite (and fashion tactic)
in a culture of plastic
a frantic, trans-atlantic
never the static, pan-galactic
panic-polluted-populus
smiling with macburger happiness
that thinly veneers the distress

when men are all brothers,
it’s true BUT,
the very same brothers are all men too

rock-a-bye-baby on the tree-top
you’ll master nintendo before your balls drop

Love In The Afternoon

Shirley Beckett

Crush to cross at the greenman
rush with the tall man
in mottled black duffel
holding a thin paper cone
he stops to unwrap by Pavilion lawn
— to strike a plant? —

then strides ahead so you see
he’s hiding, bright by dark coat,
an unwrapped rose

to the crush at the bus stop
where schoolboys, winemen, tired typists
gaze unseeing
as he shows the girl the rose

who laughs, embracing.
Only I smile, passing
into the March evening —
cheating with sleet.

A Statue Rising

John Grenwood

Gather round me
ghostly mechanisms
and become apparent
for I am encased in copper
shackled into green depths
metallic dust
old light
swelling freedom is at the heart
of ugliness, a statue rising
from the silt, perfected by water.
An elaborate dumbshow of drowning,
its gestures towards beauty swallow themselves,
hands full of the scummy recesses,
I am breaking towards who knows what light.

Sofa

Nyk Irvin

Well there you were
on the sofa
next to me
all questions and unreserved.
I sat on the sofa
and fantasised
a bit,
then I opened my eyes
looked from inwards
to outwards
saw your imperfections
and sat on the floor.

Heart Of Darkness

Gerald Fiebig

It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Joseph Conrad

upstairs a hoover is choking on words
old letters flooding back have silenced the toilet
someone keeps their diary in the fire-safety record
in a handwriting no one can read
while I fix another teacup with band aid

my blood’s coagulated into small change
& sucked out of my head & body
by the payphone in the hall
the radiator’s frozen to the wall
if you turn it on it comes running

in the mercurochrome-flavoured streetlight
the shadows of the fire escape look like waste DNA
& every night at three o’clock the alarm bell starts screaming
because the sane man in the basement is frying his eggs
home is where the heart attack is.

Pregnant

Philip Eley

In a moment pregnant with the future
She bathes in rotund beauty
To writhe with distrust
Or to soak up the sweat of my lust?

Each moment combusts with possible worlds
It’s all too fertile and fleshy and plump
She’s sumptuous but equally full on love and hate
I know I always leave too late.

My breathing is too self-conscious
Each move she makes betrays my longing
I half expect her to strip
And I half expect her to spit.

Swallow or spit
What sort of thing is this
On which to base our lives
She dips her toes in discontent
Then dives.

Bitch On Heat

Julie Martin

With a love so pure and sweet
You went for him
Like a bitch on heat
So dainty you think you are
The way you threw yourself at his feet
For his needs you think you can meet
But you being you
Like a bitch on heat
Remember this
If you play with fire you’ll get burnt
And a lesson
I hope you’ve learnt

COURT ADJOURNED

Eldin – The Boy Who Pulled A Pin From A Live Grenade

Beryl Fenton

On his first flight
He wanted to snatch
The bandages
From his sightless eyes
To see —
But… had no hands.

Anniversary Fly-Past 1995

Phyllis Damonte

After fifty years
I heard it again
The unmistakable throb
of a German bomber plane.

I felt a shiver of cold panic
creep over me. Back came
remembered nights of fear
when as a young girl
I’d hear the wail and swoosh of
bombs falling from the sky.
Crouched into a ball tight, and small
I’d count as bombs would fall.
Towards streets lit by moonlight
stark, bright, shining white.
The beauty of moonlight
lovers delight
became a fearful dread
knowing as we did what was ahead.
Enemy bombers already in flight.

Windy Cows

Shirley Beckett

The wind howls on this bright, bright day.
Fling wide the glass door but hide
behind it
— to avoid the gusty rush —;
see:
reflection on reflection —
the great green hill,
the heaving tree,
cows dancing the branches.

Weather II

Sophie Embury
(aged 12)

Look up to the skies
what can you see?
sunny sun shining
or haily hail hailing.

Maybe Thundery Thunder Thundering
or even snowy snow snowing
what can you see
up in those skies?

I Think Therefore I Am

Debo

Cry baby you are human
down jowl salty waves wash
are you sad
or
just pissed off
your face
crocodiles snapping
frustration dripping
anger ripping
into pieces
from realisation:
I am me
Je pense donc, je suis

Arrogance

Danny Birchall

Just because you’re pissed,
You think the world revolves around you.

Feet Like Ice

Clive Hackney

Feet like ice
Wriggle your toes
Feet like ice
Cold as your nose
Feet like ice
Starting to freeze
Feet like ice
Cold as your knees
Feet like ice
Coloured white
Feet like ice
Shoes too tight
Feet like ice
Cold as blocks
Feet like ice
Where’s my socks?

Twisted Sister

Tricia Turner-Savage

Destructive, your blue stretch-eyed vanity
Andrea Del Sarto cloaked it somehow
disguising your too-big penis.
Felled by men’s desire to own…
Maybe a Leighton or a Klimt.
Failed again your slutty whim
disturbs the yellows pollinating
your fantasy-fading clit.
I call back an old master
to my year… hungry for an answer
about this latest mistress
to pull aside that evil velvet
reeked with flame.
Legs spreading Flora
with a fawn shape-shifting off the ground.

Your caricature caressed
I recognise and upstage my own sisterliness.
Still letting my tongue rummage the room of your ear.
And patter hopeful kisses down the neck of your lounge.
But,
where you lie now, no curtains part
to audience tomorrow.

Life is a four letter word

Debo

Fifteen thousand
flee Rwanda
camp on a hill
but have no shelter

Fifteen thousand
hungry mouths
eating despair
swallowing screams

Fifteen thousand
weep unseen tears
cry a lake of hell
to drown in

Fifteen thousand
flies plague dead eyes
fifteen thousand
survive
who counts the dead

Nostalgia

Nick Sweet

As a wave which comes from the shore of the past
(Where memories like grains of sand lie amassed),
Knocking ships off their course, so your old perfume
Sometimes waits to surprise me in a strange room.

A Blueshift for History

Simon Jenner

To twist the clocks back
you’d need an infinite reach
knowing time’s springs won’t snap
however the telescopes stretch —
the coils of stars compress compress
to loose black holes of sightlessness.

Take red shifts to history
travel out of its silences sidelong
and splashdown on reach-me-down centuries
where time’s hands still go their bent jerking
you’d sideways tap your tiny hammer
so living has a scruple less shudder.

A Chop for W.B.

John Head

“It’s only ecology”
said the tyger
as he ate the lamb

Bird’s Eye View Of The Damage We Do

Sonja Ctvrtecka

I
Raw flesh scorched to bare bones
vultures swerved for a closer look
venture out to a new bare brick
concrete blood-letting world where
scored flesh burns, skin shrivels
brown to black, sticks to stones;
mind how we tread, even those
scavengers from skyways high
on smoke filled air currents
dare not try their luck here.

II
A different death to observe
so they wing their way heavily
lead-lousy-laden-lungs give out;
in this place vultures choke to death
dropping oil clad against a
forgotten land.

III
Raw rocks cragged before their time
stand out in relief to make
raw flesh, flaunted, strung out, look
like sheets, grey gauzed backcloth
hiding our eyes for a moment from
hideous skies never before dreamed of.

Plastic Pearls Lack Lustre

Debo

If we could understand the whale
blipping through the sonar scale
radar of a watery kind
sound vibrations echo-ing out
doing the rounds
like a thunderstorm
Lightening
Waves
adverse conditions
white horses racing
outside odds
blue whale screaming
out of my sea
take your nets
take your harpoon
clear up all your mess
currents moving round the globe
spreading chaos in the wake
poison fish toxic dilution
will you be glad when the sea is dead
D’you think a new one can be purchased
paid for with a pound of cod
made in Taiwan printed on plastic sea bed

Moving Eye

John Greenwood

Seen from a train this country
staggers me. Though I am
indifferent to its inhabitants
and despise its customs; even
this derelict hut is beautiful.

A passing world of notalgia and rust
is for once resonant with solidity,
for once content to mean no more than itself.
This tangle of once-bright ideas
is a blank poem. It does not fail.

Because of a few anonymous hours.
A moving eye between personalities.
The mind floods around unfamiliar shapes
and memories. An explorer.

Stark

Ross Clifford

gargoyles jutted
stark
in the land of legend

barrowboys felt their fags press hard

and old men gazed at pink bedspreads
or beyond them to moments of ignorance
or something unfulfilled

in the park the dew was melting
women drifted, large white birds watched

mostly curtains concealed imperfect love
the summer was far away in Dutch paintings

the gargoyles spoke inelegant sentences
about death and hell but nobody listened.
Everybody pitched their eyes low
and hoped secretly, the gargoyles
had not heard their shifting feet
or seen their insidious thoughts

or remained staring at them
through the blank mist
sometime in early spring
when things should feel a little less
black, a little less real

You

Arthur Thickett

Perhaps I can take care
Of your hair — straggly in the rain,
or kiss your strangest thought
… or warm your toes …

Or, wondering how it was I met you
thinking I can never do without you
… brush away the raindrop on your nose …

You… chafe the scars across my mind — I trouble you
But in your Hampstead flat among the red wine
I touch your troubles
And, listening to the Leonard Cohen record
… we sleep.

It is quiet in the morning
Just your nose above the blankets…
… as I leave …

Then…
The catch…
In your voice…
From the phone…

Mutual Chimes

Sonja Ctvrtecka

Green peppered
light rice
slice upon slice
meats
bamboo shoots
mushroom sauced
to cymbal sounds
tympani echoed
water rum to
wine drinking
drum souls meet
across time.

Unrequited
gone-before
lost loves
lusts eaten
on rice bed living
telling
an intimate chime.

Flutes
lightly we passion
unitely fall against
each other
taste after taste.

Masks

Simon Jenner

Isn’t it your key to my regret
when I groped a mask that wouldn’t fit
you’d skin its smile to unfasten love
by making faces that it couldn’t move?
As my smile tried wintering on a makeshift stage,
and my teeth behind chattered defence behind a page-
That mask’ll keep us warm” you might have said-
smashed it to matchwood – fired. Take me to bed.
But there’s a skin between these cedar dreams
and a forest of saying that sways between;
what you’d have said were nothing of us now
an open theatre forgotten under snow.

Hope is Blind

John Head

The fingers of winter trees
feel the braille of summer.

Dandelions

Debo

Dandelions have spent their time
thistle down on Summer
clocks retreat before
Festival of Light

and days of dark breakfast
icy morning, boiling breath
trees cascade falling leave
birds gather to chatter

and pack their nests
and fly away
Oh come back Peter
come back Paul

when Winter drifts have
blown away and
Spring is sweet
hear Summer call

This Man

Danny Birchall

This man who sits, who sits
nervously on the bus, on the
top deck of the bus, combing
his hair again, and again
combing his hair, peering
through thick glasses,
thick glasses and dirty windows,
into winter’s darkness
has a plan.

His plan is in a bag, a bag
full of books, books and folders,
files and clippings, covered in
grubby plastic covers, held together
with rubberbands, sticking-plasters
and sellotape, and also
a notebook, and in the notebook
is the plan.

This man is setting about
solving the world, he is
solving the world and more than that
he is saving the world,
collecting the bits and pieces
that nobody notices:
he jots his observations down
and he combs, combs his hair
again, he is making drawings,
drawings and diagrams,
alongside his observations
in narrow columns, altogether
they all come together,
and he is creating a picture,
the big picture, and with this
he will save the world.

Clara

Ivor Colledge

The first face over my cradle in the Veldt
Had primordial apricot skin
Smiling out of an azure sky
With timeless understanding
Concentrated in genesistic eyes
Beyond wisdom

She was the last of her kind
This ancestral Eve
Squeezed between the Hottentot and the Boer
Africa became small
For one who came before us all
My Bushman nurse

(from Laurens Van der Post)

Mist With Music

Helmuth Osbourne

Deep deep bone china sky
felt it would crack if I touched
emerald grass flickered with fairy lights
two pixie children I fell in love with
pulled faces laughed danced and played
I held money up to the sky laughed at it
marvelled its beauty like a magpie
then I walked down the yellow road
into a coppery golden mist with music
I dreamed I was in paradise

Camp Follower

Tricia Turner-Savage

You, that fatal three-lettered fondness
created out of storm.
Sweet slut.
Can it be curtained
your obscurity.
In how unfeeling you are,
when we reach ground level
and discover mezanine.
How fell that star
with my name on its hem.
Each treasure passed
each lovely look you gave
all pulled back in.
You lie
a jewel that’s just too large to wear.
Well-practised three decades…
I sipped with friends a glorious Californian wine
savouring your childhood hyperactivity
within each sip
invited in like a monogrammed courtesan.
You charmed me
a snake would know your depth
with smooth song voice and hymns of kisses
from a golden popper-fed Venusian trickery.
How slovenly your charm that now descends
from your uninviting mouth
no taste or sound
can distil me now.
Deliberate your desire
that filofaxed my trap
set carefully amid well-camoflaged events
that led me on and on.
So keen your cut you overlooked
my guardian angel’s thread.

RoadWolf

Ross Clifford

Desire squints – it keeps me cold – it keeps me.
Abysmal dark, I am lots mad – madder than the world
I am nothing – my desires are hollow words
written in lead – filled black willow.
In the love’s skin that covers your body.

I am the bullet in the eye of the dead wolf
on the road in the deadland
(where flies hum)
round the scarred features
sandblows / light withers
blood dries in the tracks of departed angels.

Change of Scene

John Head

One dark night
I built an artificial world
and in the morning
nobody knew

Serious Intent

Pauline Suett

What will they look like
these poets of serious intent
Will they wear blue stockings
which wrinkle a literary bent

Will they have iambic feet
which causes them to strut
Or will they just wobble a bit
on a catalectic foot

Will they be set in concrete
cracking poems throughout the land
Or will they sport a trochee
and beat the prosey band

Will they suffer from lineation
and have breaks at every chance
Or will they cry amnesia
and indulge in consonance

Will they eat enjambment
butties and wash in dactyl bowls
Say it all in monometer
as tutors unfurl scrolls

Will they cook a delicacy
of literary words anew
And sit around the poetic urn
and serve an empiric stew

Will they voice a villanelle
or find the going tough
And leave them all to Master Dylan
who seamed them off his cuff

Will they take an octave
and knock it for a six
And hand us all an allegory
with hyperbolic fix

Will they risk a roundel
and return from where they have been
Seeking songs before sunrise
with an Atalantan beam

Will they have an accent
which will cause an anapaest
With blank looks from foreign scribes
whose seriousness is best

And who will offer a paradox
of serious intent
All poets are aging liars
of a somewhat truthful bent