Five
poems by- Norman
Jope
Arcades-
- Dopamine floods
the receptors.
- Humbled guard-dogs
cower, slavering
- as barbed wire
melts, a filigree candy.
- And it’s easy
again to sit here
- counting the
leaf-stars, licked by zephyrs
- with an age rolled
out, a verdant rug
- that eases the
feet worn down by history.
- Those difficult
years left bunions –
- word-gnarled,
callous, still hard to stroll on -
- but the Barbies
mince ahead, they pout
- as if all memory
were deft as scent
- and feeling good
feels good, that’s it,
- even if the garden
is a swamp, that stagnant.
-
- We expected
vertigo, the nail-sharp crampons,
- not these arcades,
where commercial childhood
- stretches to
senility – the skies avoided.
Elsewhere-
- Desire blows open
door after door
- to where we lie,
on such a wide warm bed -
- you, who did not
expect to be here,
- kidnapped from
elsewhere
- to be concealed in
elsewhere.
- Yet you turn and
clamber over -
- with a motion of
your hand, you flick your hair back
- and settle,
swaying, sliding and enfolding
- as if you were the
blanket and the air above it,
- the black star
column over the ceiling,
- the guarantor and
goddess of elsewhere
- that you offer to
the skin, despite your abduction,
- as we love in a
place whose name we escape.
Lloyd's List
-
- The bells clang
underwater
- and the day that
was lost
- lists in memory,
as night's glaucomas
- fasten to far
stars and shadows of wrack.
-
- Prawle, Start,
Bolt… the waters pillow the darkness.
- This stretch of
land juts into a cloud
- that presses on
the shoals of the chowder coasts,
- three thousand
miles to the green-bellied west.
-
- We are lost in
water as we cling to the shore,
- taking blind
readings, mapped amongst the dead,
- departed already
yet awaiting our return
-
- as night keeps
falling, as unintended,
- the process
advancing to the point where seas boil.
- Our words are
registered now, yet mute.
Sable Star
-
- In a scented land,
the messages persist
- in the shape of a
girl whose name resounds
- on alien lips with
mystique and lust.
-
- She reclines on
the bed, getting younger by the hour
- and remains as
willing, as claimed by her exotic,
- by the wealth she
lacks, by hospitable scruples,
- having not yet
learnt that rejection is more potent.
-
- She was warm once,
when the gold of her hips
- attracted the
brush, its alchemic ochres
- grasping at
permanence. But even then, in shade,
- the envisioned one
lurked, real owner of that flesh,
- of the flesh of
the artist, even more urgently -
-
- Chronos.
Ankou. Tupapau.
-
- Tautly, Tehura
remains at rest
- like a
woman-shaped island on those sheets,
- her pupils deep
black, the negatives of Venus.
Zenith
-
- The 'moment of
night is over' again.
- Gone, the downward
gaze and the downward spiral,
- the sense of a
life in closedown mode,
- the lure of a
death that is no answer at all
- but a sealing of
the question's idiot grin.
-
- The jesses are
off, and here are the horizons.
- The ferry is at
ease, in the turquoise straits -
- fording no Styx,
it travels like a wave
- from brilliant
island to island,
- on which we will
invent ourselves with fake IDs
- that were once our
own, reclaimed from the dead.
-
- We embrace on
cliffs of high white marble
- where the sun
heats up the stones, as if from inside
- and know that it
can’t last, how strange the earth is.
- Yet what purpose
has a heaven where the sun fails to shine
- and all flesh is
abstracted, all congress scripted?
- Better to descend
to the accompaniment of torches,
- fading into shade,
beyond memory's husks,
- and better dream
of this than spend a life sleeping,
- despite the kings
of separation with their bullying voices.
-
- For that is how we
are able to make love
- with our eyes wide
open, on the lintel of the world
- and that is why we
can never exist.
- Five
poems by
- Srdjan
Djeric
Another State of Consciousness
There are less and less of us, dreamers
We're withdrawing into another state of mind
Following traces of a lost tribe
Snows in the passage are announcing some steps
Somebody is at the door of my winter lives...
We set out to the distant open-sea
When searching for a hidden shape of knowledge
Our tracks are disappearing in cold waves
Like fisherman with torn nets
I make sacrifice to gods at dawn.
Change of seasons is nothing but
The playing of a variegated duckbill,
Dead nature is left unfinished...
Nonsense
Alarm clock stops the last possibility
To live without obligations, at half past six
The parrot from the next-door flat
Is trying to imitate its digital melody, not
knowing
That it's impossible to imitate digital sounds
(Neighbours should buy a parrot-replicant)...
I put the latest straitjacket on
And the tie that repulses people,
That's the way to be more productive.
I am putting the projects for ruining
Some antique monuments in the briefcase
Taking them to the main director of
Modern world's chaos, to be checked.
Yet to drink a cup of coffee made instantly
With much sugar and little milk
And I'll be ready for a new working day
Which takes from me
Even the last tracks of tranquillity...
Cosmic Anathema
Great flood wept out half of the town
Crows moved into our souls
And saints do not exist among us,
They are hidden between the lines
In the books of revelation.
None of the streets nor suburbs nor large fields
Are the creation of our foggy dreams
Surrounded by incorporeal creature's poems
Our glance was always cast
Out of the frame of ephemeral knowledge,
But all alchemic and esoteric secrets
Were left misinterpreted
Promised kingdom can hardly be seen
Hidden by anathema of inquisitions.
We're slowly loosing the important cosmic battle
Only one spoonful of distant star's mass
Is enough for disappearance...
A Black Orchid
Go back to your original colours
Now, when you are onomatopoeia of cold faces
Gothic rakes didn't in vain make orgies in
castles
Diamonds in cupboard causing envy and
The angel on the black horse is one of them.
We are besieged by sea and reefs
A few cobwebs thrown at random
Like a silk dew of woods in the Andes
Where it dawns twice a day
In memories...
So little time floats through us
Canons of wisdom are left captivated
Behind the massive walls of Alexandria.
Inexorably, time becomes a charmed circle...
A black orchid is closing its petals
In the garden of red roses of Damask.
Fears We Are Familiar With
Fears we are familiar with
Cannot be destroyed
The winner is always
A hot cane of illegal Gods
To whom we pray,
Everything is lonely imagination of a shore
Destroyed by the sand of oblivion...
There is no identified crime
People are always making promises,
I can't live in the plastic water
Guided by primordial instinct
I never choose self-control,
It's impossible to always
Keep the same temperature
When colour-blind people are marching proudly
(There was a man who liked a picture
Instead of Persian roses)...
There are no rhymes which rhyme
An answer does not recognise the truth
The answer was in the question,
Reality is not appealing
There are less sacrificed souls
Sorry, my disturbance is unintentional...
- Nine
Poems by
- Corey
Mesler
-
-
- Flowering
Outside of Time
-
- My daughter’s
hand opens
- like a lily.
- She is giving me
another
- present.
-
-
- Beware of
Darkness
-
- When I fell
- I fell hard.
- The asphalt kissed
me,
- dislodging teeth.
- But, friends,
- this is the part I
do not
- tell. The darkness
- assuaged my
- simple
loneliness—
- I did not leave it
lightly.
- And it is there
still,
- a convivial
barracoon.
- Beckoning.
-
-
- Little
Heart
-
- Little heart, how
came
- you to be what I
rely on,
- little canker, no
bigger
- than a lie?
-
-
- I Only Want
What my Arms Want
-
- “Whoever
embraces a woman is Adam.
- The woman is
Eve.”
- Jorge Luis
Borges
-
- The distance
between us accordions like
- the death of a
planet,
- the black hole
that is flesh-loneliness.
- It’s a funny
world: I can pull your picture
- up on this outer
space screen, the
- same space I use
to write these words. And
- you say: your
words are warm
- on my flesh. So, I
long for your flesh,
- across the great
uncharted pelagic wash of stars,
- loose in the
huggermugger world.
-
-
- The
Difficult Poem
-
- The difficult poem
- is waiting for you
- like a blind date.
- The difficult poem
- wants you to tax
your
- resources. The
girl
- you love is at
peace
- with the difficult
poem.
- Your parents say
ignore it.
- Your best friend
- tells you he
writes better
- than the difficult
poet.
- Your head hurts,
your
- eyes see only
stars.
- Words don’t
mean what
- they meant only
yesterday.
- Breathe, you tell
yourself.
- The last word of
- the difficult poem
is
- begin
-
-
- Meeting
-
- The throw rug
- we threw down
- shifts under my
feet.
- You lift your
skirt.
- There is warmth,
- danger, change.
- You are Manichean,
- bright and dark.
- The tan stops
where
- the light begins.
- The light that
leads
- me on, a stranger
- perhaps, full of
sin
- and wonder,
- full of the very
juice
- that revives you.
-
-
- Spellbind
-
- A red thread
- plaited into the
- severed braid
- of stone-brown
- hair, laid beside
- the stream, as
- if the one most
- suited would come
- only this way,
- to find what
- has not been lost
- so much, as
- placed there, like
- your best prayer.
-
-
- The
Dead Father
-
- "I
scowled at the mirror and caught
- hold of my
father, my long gone father.”
- Walter Martin
-
- Dead a month now
- I cannot say the
word dead.
- He is ashes
- and the taste is
in my mouth;
- the brickleness of
- my bones scrapes
my heart.
- Grieving is
physical;
- this I did not
know.
- Now, 30 days later
to the day,
- I still wake up
- to find a hole in
the world.
- Everyone else
moves
- around as if it
doesn’t exist.
- Everyone else
- loves and hates
and feigns
- indifference.
Mornings
- I make up the bed
the way a monk
- would do, in his
- tiny cell, with
only a sliver of
- light for company.
-
-
- Grit
-
- Small poem, grit
in the eye.
- Remember it in
grocery line.
- Right before sleep
let it
- soak in. Small
poem, made
- of mummery and
prater.
- Five
poems by
- W.B.
Keckler
Apology
I can't
write to you because your reality
will come at the expense of my unreality.
Or vice versa. Let's imagine each other
monumentally wrong, but wonderfully human
for avoiding the struggle-unto-death
which would surely touch one of us to the quick
and kill the numinous third of vague love
between us, which is a purity of moments,
an essence, and a sanctification of life
as something superb in its lack of definition,
something akin to the space between objects
which gives them their own measure and music
which some may call "nothing," but
which painters
see as elation. This plastic space is life.
I feel the distance always changing, changing
between us
and it does not go away. It must live
beyond us
and I will not be the first to strike.
Cut-Rate
Sashimi opens and shuts
its eyes
As the knife slices off fragile tissues, thin
Galaxy-sectioned
As (or) a sex opens and closes
Dark mussels
The pearl diver's knife
As ( ) notable sport fishes
The eye in a marmalade
After the fall of
The tongue's
Selling price
Sleepy
The fish's tail flails suddenly
"There is no 'suddenly'"
Children tell their lovers
Words I Didn't Speak at Your Funeral
a flight pent up
is a death instinct
inside a whiskey bottle
the wall of clouds reflects
a Gorky
I meant "practical grounds"
for dismissal
of cell formation in, say Russia
going to the moon
more white noise
so I meant to ask you anyway
"What is a gesture?"
do we absorb
what a person was (or wasn't
the pencil moving through clumps of acrylic
bumps over the mountains
of matter's various moods
clump clump
like an embryo tonight, the moon
is dreaming adaptation
like the golden sarcophagi of Egypt
everything is too late
but soaked with memory
baba au rhum
matter has a nosebleed...
Nude
The body spreads
itself, a feast
of paper, seems
delicious until
the eye, rising,
finds nothing there.
It has no face,
no malleable, endless
thing, source
to read and feed.
No eyes, mouth,
nostrils daring.
Rubber doll,
hole, dildo,
pliable and nice.
Inedible cold dish,
universe and ice.
The headless body
is invincible.
Museum
Here are mercury vials they used
to poison themselves with cure
and here is a scalpel
that severed nerves misunderstood
which spoke too continuously
beyond the human gamut of feeling
and here a diagram of the human body
that once closed tightly as a mollusk
against the world
as language pearlized the inside
as music too much like radiation
overexposed brains like a photograph
leaving us with this archive
honeycombed with the wishes of doctors
who cultivated silence in glass vessels
and mirrorless rooms
who felt such rage at being ignored
at a mouse's whiskered twitch
or a laugh that burned their white backs.
Five poems by
Sandra
Tappenden
People moulded out of air
Etiquette is a load of stupid nonsense;
anyone can move into your dreams
without making an appointment
or even bothering to get dressed.
At 2 a.m. someone was knocking;
it woke me out of a cocoon I`ve
been spinning for years, although
I can`t follow a pattern to save my life.
“Dear Wisp, you are invited to a party
with all the other happy ghosts I love.”
But gatecrashers are queueing and
I don`t like the cut of their jibes.
Napkins were invented to save our blushes,
like all the fiddley things we say to spare us
being ugly. Dignity is unable to encompass shit;
I am trying not to frown myself to death.
People who are drawn to take free
stress tests
The high street is a picture of anywhere
this side of salt water, although there`s
a shiny sculpture with old riddles on it
where people tidy their reflected hair.
(I like back streets, where butchers
are selling their hacking kits on-line
and you can buy out-of-date chocolate
in the spooky mini-mart.)
The checkout girl in Boots
wears a scarf arranged over her head
which means she belongs to
something I don`t.
A chance encounter with Elizabeth
was the exact missing thing;
hugging and theology in the alley
behind that weird little factory.
Where does anyone live nowadays?
Certainty is a product like anything else
and poets are not much use are they
I often think I overhear someone say.
People who charm your pants off need
more love
It`s not true that red-hair equals
personality disorder; I found this out by asking,
bored with the heat. Look at the curtain
hanging limp; no breath. A hamster`s life
is short, but might be fun. And then Kev
went and spoiled it all by having a party;
all the top girls sat in a row, their toenails
really well-cared for, you could tell.
Running away to the circus or sea
for one night only often clears the air.
I don`t really like you that much but
I can`t put my finger on it. O ennui.
Perhaps I won't marry Khalid after all.
People who infer via mass media- (Live
8)
Madonna holds hands with a woman
who almost starved to death in front of our eyes.
I am surprised I can still be surprised.
No newspaper I want to read
offers more than Lord of the Flies.
Civilisation`s a jab you get from your doctor.
Mim comes in and says O is this the tennis?
which I find gently pornographic. Yawns and
sighs;
morality is a funny old word, eh.
People with a point to prove
Baseball caps make anonymity cool.
When that car almost ran you over
were you thinking about money,
or a job with a boss who looked less
like a monkey? I am so tired
of looking and looking; the eyes
are a feature we take for granted.
The eyes are windows starvation wants
to replace with UPVC frames. It
is something I have been considering,
yes, I admit it, now get off my phone.
The streets are magnificent with stains;
old wounds and wants, motley accidents.
The other day we laughed about that
incident where a man had his legs broken.
We are shaking inside all the time;
what we do is go swimming or take
advantage of expensive smiles.
I love you; that remarkable ability
to win out on the pavement.
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