Five Poems by

Steven Taylor

Jazz Dancing with Methuselah's Feet

 

The Lord God Almighty

 

Grown weary of teasing him

About his empty feet

Finally provides him

With something more exotic

Than the women who clean

And shop for him, or the warm armchair

By the radiator at the luncheon club

On a Wednesday afternoon

Where he sleeps undreaming

His many dreams. Methuselah still covets

 

The chiropodist with her hands

Rubbing his memory to life, but

 

When it is time

God beckons and happily electrocuted

 

Methuselah will leap, his tired feet

Filled up with jazz - Jazz dancing

Behold

 

The face of Jesus

In the lumpy porridge sky

Peppered with sunlight

Easter Monday

 

The crazy man who

 

mimes furiously to me

against the hard glass

of the window opposite

this window in His vest

or nude has returned. I

 

had foolishly concluded

that He might be dead

as well as crazy nude

and furious, but I was

mistaken. He is risen -

 

and now He mimes

more furiously than ever

 

ever and ever

Adam & Eve

 

The red raw and singular eye

Of his penis glares at her

Across the crowded room...

 

It makes her vagina breathless

 

 

Paris, Lancs.

 

But let's give Jehovah his due

That cardigan from the Spastics Shop

At least sustains a flight of geese

And his teeth were his own

Until a year ago

And that dreadful accident

With the dovetail and the cart

I remember it well

The sun was the colour of a ponsietta

And you could see Blackpool Tower

Through binoculars

Hurrah

Three Poems by

Tim Allen

 

Over Time

 

One lamp in the kingdom

It is the kingdom of one lamp

 

One flower in the kingdom

It is the kingdom of one flower

 

One spring in the landscape

It is the kingdom of one bearing

 

One lip in the kingdom

It is the kingdom of feminine whiteout

 

One description of the traitor

It is the kingdom of images

 

One palm in the edgy bet

It is the kingdom of topiaries

 

One place in the presentiment

It is the palace of pit kings

 

One tatter on the flag

It is the airport of masculine delibles

 

One leaf in the foliage

It is the kingdom of what is left

 

One watch in the kingdom

It is the present for always

 

One match in the music-moment

It is the blush-blue kingdom

 

One shepherd on the gallows

It is the kingdom of nursery disguises

 

One loud character on the ocean

It is the Queen's free-floating thought

 

One dole queue outside the theatre

We are in gently unfolding city

 

One sudsy feeling too many

In the kingdom of new dust

 

Once is never enough

It is the furthest of kingdoms

 

No disquieting silences

All have their silent knowledge

 

No intrusive absences

In the land of flooded orchards

 

No frill chemistry sets

In the kingdom of parenthesis

 

The kingdom of the living ones

Once inside the transparent shadow

 

Speaking the language of powder

Shaking like a leaf

 

Shaking like a lamp

In the one-myth kingdom

 

In the one-legend kingdom

The one legged man is regent

 

One cinema in the kingdom

It is the kingdom of one sin

 

One unrealised substance

Imprisoned in a toothpaste tube

 

One film in the tub

It is the kingdom of ice-cream

 

The minister of prisons

Is now the minister of monopolies

 

An ageless smell finally gone off

A desire

 

Stacked horizons in the revolution

It is the kingdom of revolutions

 

A desire for a skirt of compost

In a side room as cold as winter

 

One slope in the kingdom

It is the kingdom of one slope

 

And abandoned nuts

Astonishing little secrets

 

Stalker

 

A broken wind

Fills the shop

 

The shop sells

Spare fingers

 

At any moment

A morning

 

The broken wind

Takes care

 

A few thoughts

Form a strong triangle

 

*

 

The traveller

Lifts

 

A fridge and

Washing machine

 

With his

Fingers

 

Mind

Mind broken open

 

For the asking

Family man

 

*

 

Moss blooms

Guessing its way

 

A few minutes

Left

 

The domestic

Dollar

 

Blows through

The birth canal

 

Kerb dancer

Ghost muscle

 

Intangible Mule

 

*

 

Shape under

Pressure

 

The gamble

Of a charm

 

An arm-eye

Sweeping away

 

Facts

And choice fiction

 

*

 

The little papa -

The little popa

 

The attention

Of breeze

 

The freedom

Of business

 

All nature

Is is clocks

 

*

 

Incessant

Slow

 

Forming fast

Moves

 

Trees sway -

TVs in tremor

 

Another leaking

Colour

 

Points obscenely

To a natural scene

 

Insect waltz

Mobile boil

 

 

No Special Place

 

Through flimsy adults

Through flimsy intersections

Through flimsy initialled knots

 

Comedy made the way glass is made

Yet a comedy is nothing like glass

A comedy is nothing to that cool completion

 

Speak - tough fruits for a tough explorer

Buried birds

Spaghettied moon

 

*

 

Aristo through and thru

Aristo through a loan

A loan across continents of time

 

Slices of momentum

Sleeping on the edge of a cliff

A carefully repeated silence

 

*

 

The roof has fallen in and children have grown

All has been touched

The inferno has been touched

 

Two Poems by

John Gimblett

from A Wasted Life

 

Pompeii

 

The man sat, as if thinking, yet

he was stone, through and through.

But a core, a pith of bone burned,

like lava in an attempt at escape.

His face, contorted, a mis-shapen

spring fought to right the originality;

the flesh of suitability to his species.

 

And I thought of lizards: plastered

with a second skin of stone, burned

as if sprung, fire from the street.

Running, slow against the flow, 60

m.p.h. Perhaps

 

to be undiscovered, the seed in

a kernel of rock, feet splayed, spreading

the mud. The ash dropping, grey specks

dotting the reptile, who'd become

subject to volcanic pointalism. I saw

a body, lying, like it was caught in

sleep by a sublime dream. The

man stretched his limbs, took on the

wherewithal of an astute, scared gecko.

 

Monkey (Gujarat)

 

Perhaps it ends here, in

Rajkot, with a gentle, loose

step into tree tops. Facing

the temple, perhaps it

 

ends with the loving tug

of Tirthankars, pulling me

to earth. The warm air,

whistling with the green

 

shrieks of parakeets, bloody

with a dusk sun, would

support me if I fell.

If I fall, will I fly?

 

The white temple, and the

black cloud, hold me still.

 

Perhaps it ends

with the spiralling twist

of falling into the canopy

of tamarinds, perhaps it ends

with the leaves like green

feathers holding me,

folding me up into earth?

 

Five Poems by

Rupert M. Loydell

 

 

It's an Abstract World

for, and from, Peter Dent

 

Want to know?

Relax the muscle,

spin notes in air.

 

Speech excites,

breathes within

bright horizons:

 

a strung-up sun,

filament flickering;

fire of the moment.

 

A Conference of Voices

 

A good week, going well;

what I've seen, I like.

I remember Monday

warmer than imagined.

 

I am training to join

a conference of voices,

will send and report

any declared policy.

 

I shall not wear blue,

I shall not wear beige;

will try to trick myself

into believing I care.

 

How I would prefer

large scale treason,

the least distraction

consigned to the page.

 

Obviously a vase

is not just pottery.

Why presume simplicity

is an ongoing process?

 

Even in Darkness

 

Drawing slow lines

(a dark river's silt)

 

Inherent uncertainty

(echo sound nightmare)

 

Softly breathe

(safe ground)

 

My Version of It

 

It is always going to be like this now,

with no time to sit and type

or listen to something new.

 

I dream about keeping a journal.

The moonlight turns red

and tiptoes from the room.

 

I feel outside any discussion,

recognise only forms of absence,

the fundamentally unpredictable.

 

I look for the pulse in language

and try to wrap something around you:

cause your soul to arc, your spirit to spark.

 

There may come a day when

it is not enough to touch words;

my life will become a true story.

 

Learning to Live with Train Crashes

 

If all things are allowed to speak

why can't we hear parts of that speech?

Give us some passionate detail!

Found phrases suggest something

but don't deliver much around the edges;

watching painting videos is not painting.

 

Art today should be spiritual,

without the paraphernalia of culture

or evidence of human intervention.

I want things for mind, eye and moment,

my own transient boundaries of thinking;

want the moon, not the finger pointing at it.

 

Interviews confirm all I know about

my own habits and modes of work.

I am quizzing myself about composition,

no longer fear any cognitive models.

Process is a kind of luxurious indulgence;

there are no anomalies in using systems.

 

Methods of extraordinary sophistication

are adopted to procure the right words.

The basis for most writing is music:

step back and imagine melody anew,

let life flash by, dancing in it's own way.

Horizons open as the postman arrives.

 

Thank you for your three letters today,

the mail is absolutely fizzing!

I was feeling more and more

cut off from the rest of my life

but am travelling back first class

to my own painting this afternoon.

 

A Poem in the New Millennium by

John Mingay

History

I taste the weight of a century gone
upon my tongue when I speak, not
of yesterday, but of a time assigned
to musty pages - a life unfinished, but
for the most part lived in, and now
inevitably to be alluded to as, history.

Every mention of the familiar now
reverberates along the same passages
previously haunted only by the ghosts
of industry in its infancy - my own
ghosts taking up the tenancy as if
to cast all I have come to know adrift.

And at every stage in putting these
words down on blank paper I am
asked whether I want to replace the
existing history, as though the option
really existed, as though the choice
was there to start afresh, slate-clean.

Yet, the reality, patently, is that
what has been has been and what
is to come is to come, the flow between
uninterrupted by anything as delicate
as date or diction, anything as brief
as a taste upon a weighted tongue.