Poetry
Set out to Sea
We could have never imagined that
We would end up here. Here
In an ethereal daylight that is so far
Detached from where our troubled minds lie.
We have reached the end and yet
There are still new paths to tread.
This is his hideout:
A house that greets the sea during a
Wild storm, his comfort a
Twisted rope not worthy of Provident.
Does he long to cross the bar?
“This microphone is not working.”
I am ignored by the sea of sandals.
Will I find it here?
“I will just have to raise my voice.”
High among the stone and timber
Where ivy should climb. Could this be it?
“I would appreciate it if the children in the front row would listen.”
I leave in dismay.
A synthetic blue rock,
A dappled gravestone,
A twisted trunk,
A secret potion that has
Betrayed its creator.
Searching.
In the next World War,
I will escape from it all to
Angels etched in white.
A frozen cross will take me
Over the edge.
I have come to terms with
My selfishness.
He confronts me in the bitter heat.
I struggle to draw the next breath
Through his intense ether,
His darkness envelops me.
“You have been waiting for the Fianna to rise.”
I long to ask his name.
Tom Hannah
Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
I stood at the top of a cliff,
Seeing a gash of the world open,
Exposing the layered reams beneath my feet.
The first day of winter had struck like an axe
And my blue fingers stung.
Retreated for defence, retreating from the cliff,
Too hard to jump off, too easy to walk away,
The cigarette, scant consolation for the chills,
Burnt ‘til fingers touched its embers.
Trapped in this liminal zone,
Unknowing whether to do what
Lying about myself whilst trying to be genuine,
Deceptions and illusions
This cliff seems inevitably to draw me in,
One way or another.
You’ve got to be psychotic to take a girl for dinner.
Robert Rulach
No Shadows
Shadow waded through the Metropolis under a jellied-eel sky
Picking its way through Sunday School Panzer Patrol, subverting—
‘The ink is black,
The page is white,
Together we learn to read and write
The world is shite’
In the suffocating warehouse of a ghost-grey mind.
This was Scumday—raining knives.
It felt a hunger descend
Racing through screaming lanes
Shadow crept halfway along Echo Park
Its reflection a drainbow haze in the oil slick pond
The daysick sun malaising behind cloud molasses.
A rabid dog, came zoning in with kohl-black eyes
All pelting skin, a craze of smoking ashes
Its unlocked jaws could swallow up the world
But Shadow stood still—a pillar of dead crows
Atomised to a vanishing point in mid-night
Slaking DEATH with the liquid grin of a cool hand.
A shallow form skulking at the bottom of the pool.
A mass of tangled hair halfway down the plughole.
Shadow wanted out,
Picked up a scroll some dead soul wrote,
Smote—
‘Become a citizen of the world,
A world where there was black and there was white
But no shadows.’
Paul Nash
El Fuego
She was used to beds.
| He didn’t care whose mattress |
he inherited subverted insubordinated |
OUT OF THE WINDOW, but she...
she was svelte, sensuous and smelt of vanilla.
It’s not certain he was aware of this,
carrying with him his own cloud
of polluted body odour.
Not a ripe and fulsome pheromone
but a rank fabric rotting testosterone
aura acquired through weeks of inter-active sloth
unchallenged by hot water and cleansing agents....soap.
The Water Board sent him urgent letters about his
worrying under use of their services
Unilever quivered in their calcified corporate nervousness.
Recovery vehicles, St Johns’ Ambulance
independent good Samaritans
hovered around anticipating
an epidemic of retching and fainting
and epileptic passers-by
succumbing in his vicini..ty
The Latin paramour disappeared,
her attraction to the rough hewn hulk
and his animal aroma shattered
by exposure to the skid-mark scattered
bachelor landscape behind once proud door
now sadly patched in five separate places
to cover the drunken blows in.icted the nights
keys had been lost or simply overlooked
in the fumble to gain entry.
So, overwhelmed by the basic lack of hygiene
and appreciation of olfactory nuances
(she still had not recovered from his insistence on
shared nocturnal flatulences)
our disillusioned olive-skinned beauty fled
the neighbourhood first taking refuge in a garden shed
then the opulent ambient converted loft
of her English as a foreign language Prof.
DE MAL EN PEOR!!
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE!!
Better homeless in Hampstead than Hackney she’d thought
as a well manicured hand round her shoulder had sought
to bury itself between muscle and breast.
The Old Spice was cloying, the hand headed West
now the torso that flexed to a hot Bossa Nova
was twisting away from a greying Casanova
Her dreams of romance fell apart at the seams
was she doomed to be feted only by Queens?
For the only good dancers were as Gay as you liked
and the best sex she’d had? With a transgendered dyke...
The city made her shiver with its’ cold retentive life
and she dreamed of Buenos Aires
and the rule of gun and knife.
At least the were macho (and clean!)
and had something left to prove,
if you didn’t .ght you wore a big hat
and were a Patron of the Groove.
The roasting coffee caught her as she crossed another street
she bundled in, dishevelled, thin
ordered cappuccino, slipped off her shoes, rubbed her feet.
The Gaggia squealed excited as she lit her cigarette
a local eyed her lustfully as he lay another bet
eyes closed she wondered
“How much worse this gonna get?”
“Cappuccino” purred the rusty voice
raising hairs upon her belly
she opened her eyes _ saw a goddess in her sky
and her legs quite turned to jelly.
“com’esta amiga? Es tu vida una mierda?
“aieee mondo mucho macho!! Ees your life getting weirder?”
They left the bar much later and strolled off into the night
and unless you know much different
they seem to make a lovely sight
and now El Fuego burns so fiercely turning
night-time into light.
Andi Langford-Woods
Draft of a Future Love Poem
For surely drabness
is best described through dullness
statue through sand
wide grins
in pain
in the past love poems
described physical features
described living moments
surely fearlessness
should be described
through foolishness, moon through disc
flowers in desert
smiles in the dark
the most revealing
description of water
is one of thirst
it includes
the dewy liquid look
the cold touch
hair height eyes of Helen
a morsel-like
aromatic description
of food
is the description of hunger
of cobwebs
dream
it conjures up an illusion
skies and birds get
into the mirror
thirst degradation
absence
of physical features
is the description of love
the future love poem
Ismail Bala Garba
A Kobo For The Sky
You get a kobo if you get it first.
You take your darling to a pub close by, early afternoon,
order all evening and still get change. If,
it were you, if it were me, we’d gulp up
and go; kiss on the road, with my liquid lips
frozen by the evening-rush’s traffc, your eyes blinking
between mine and that driver’s play of horn.
Then we’d disentangle and go back to the pub, drain
the cups again, and who’s that chortling dirty words
into my drinks? My face in the sky slow starry set...
Yes. All for a kobo if you get the trick.
Ismail Bala Garba
Yesterday’s Headlines
In one breath
these bitter punch-lines
fall heavy on deadened ears
that turn to greet
the travellers: scrambling across
razor sharp rock pools
of your hardened mind
that doubts you’ll ever see
a wind swung Odeon door pouring
soggy popcorn and Coke soaked
chalk white dust on your buttoned-up
coat collar clipped with
dark glasses
raised towards
yesterday’s headlines
scrolling across the dry retinas of
the social climbers
circling a crumb
that carries downstream
faster than a cork
leaving its bottle empty
alongside crusted cutlery
left over from the summer
when we sheltered and
life outside us spun around us so fast.
Tom Hannah
Stained Glass
The unraveled ball of wool
Which has untwined in my head
Has knitted a jumper
Made of glass and lead.
It spins from my ears
And the holes in my face,
Drips down my limbs
Like an aimless hymn
Placing plastic and bulbs
In the dull sun’s place.
These windows move
Our eyes light-up
As the scenes we dream
Are restored and improved
And the screaming pallet belies
The red dot between each of our eyes,
So all our twisting digits
Would love to type
The soul as fact, but are
Bound by the Data Protection Act.
And in the too-bright-green-non-space
Outside, our epitaphs will be
A mis-quote from
A search-engine for the
Novella of the novel
Of the play of the book
Of the film of the life
Of a friend of a friend
Of a fictional character
Who knew nothing
Of who we were.
Caleb Parkin
Work Specification
They have posted Goliath up south.
He dangles at the tip of the cliff,
snoring.
His yawnings are quakes in the night.
Down here, we assume they have hypnotised him
or we imagine he is a skyscape
which might fold itself up and fly.
Here are shoestrings, they exclaimed.
Rope him up.
We will settle you.
Rope Goliath down with these strings.
I toiled all dawn at his right toe
till the day dipped down
beside it
and darkness gathered on his eyes,
and stars settled on his lap
like work.
Ismail Bala Garba
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