Raunchland - The Eternal Anthology Vol. VII

Five poems by
Mark Goodwin
A Desk at The Writer by A Road

table volcano erupts sturdy still thuds hot
permanence against elbows his white car

paper-sharp black circular scribbling rubber
clock a person all seconds are naked in a

notebook is snow & stone a writer is mist
in time’s light a lamp a ball of phlegm spat

from night’s gland a death-fox’s diagonal dart
crunched in a re volving doodle grass is

politicians suddenly agreeing footprints through
them are children’s whispers a depressed book

pulls his face off conveying a slender paper
that conveys his spit iful bones & meat all far


Chiselling Tongues Through Forest

gold wood men amongst gaps of air & carved leaves
a wood gold horse with her fragrance of neigh gaps
lit wrap scenes so story uncurls through a frame a

bearded ghost with feathery hands sicks suggestions
into a well and a bucket stirred by a monk beneath
a tree revolves a reflection of a sunlit swirling face

be assured your eye & ear share such load talking
glimmers along with gold wood men as words glisten
in gold wood mouths as a wood gold horse whinnies light


films of my possible lived settle

when my eyelids writhe with gravity-threads stretched
between sleeps i dream being films of my possible
lived may knot when tugged to strands & tangle in pains

of bonds breaking but also as a sleep’s fire longingly licks
my mind through a soft solidity of my eyes as my eyelids
slowly slide films of my possibles lived build into layers

gentle pressures cause moments emotions faces sweat cross
places kind words objects to bleed and pass among and
through a flesh that vibrates possible on my stone frame


From Two that Accidentally Polish a Reflection
Translated from Laura Riding’s poem For One Who Will Dust a Shadow

give in our sleek reflection for its wardrobe on the
evening hardly comb it more you release it and arrive

our soul clothed without yes reflection to strip but
press our large soul from its footpath on the evening

then you’ve stripped it out every careless innumerable
obstacle now push a sleek reflection off certain at mid

night it will be lost detesting a veil off our thigh exist
in dawn a lot sly way our reflection off a sky and

on day push close our reflection for its wardrobe that is
full partly night but far off its large footpath stands

our energised large soul to be muddied with hunger if
you give these eases exactly enough to strip our ego

out in the roundabout guess now you & our soul & our
sleek reflection will all strip in loud varied separation

with everything right above



Idol

smoke man his features all see through swirls his
empty memory breathed him out smoky brush
-stroke locks flowing from his nothing brow

impatient rails stab the railway station a pelican sleek
with cool smooth green stone skin flies through this
face a greasy gleam of flight & boat-sized beak

touches his placeless shapes misery crept into a shell
to rot painted fish-scales like brush-thoughts of a sea’s
hands & fish-eyes like coiled journeys tell no endings

across his skinlessness love’s beak rips to gulp a tea
-cup cracking Parisian Griffin dark as tea tinged bitter
green hooks its claws into the fumes of this vaporous

life see how he has been stirred by beasts particles
of him vibrate golden as diamond ideas dissolve in a
face of never’s forever remembering smiles swept

Five poems by
Ray Succre

Count

Why the tepid flare of boredom?
Why pigs and marigolds penned?
The palsy of April tendrils into gardens
and into those parts arid and left,
and into those parts flocked wet. Why the tongue and teeth so clicked?
Why Spring talk still hung unworn?
The sift of May pails is soon come down
and onto these hills and homes,
and onto these avenues so patient waited out.

The Whores Wrote Their Names On Cups

She was miserable then, to the panty’s end,
snugly worn, taken off, left in gravel after
Saturday late. If in drink, he found his natures dissolved,
did he discern his cavities deepening
by the raw sugars in his seeing her?
A pitching man, a winding eye?
In drink, yes. He pitched and vanished. The unfrequented others envied her waist,
so incessantly seen to, though seldom kept. Men had made the molded woman into
bare feet over which other less-likeable men
balanced. What she said, she hadn't thought,
and what she cogitated was like murder,
golden sin, the fetching cup of last breath,
and she didn't say it,
let him continue around the thing,
then come on her face while
her squinting quetched. Couldn’t he be in love so early and strongly,
with his graphic, blue eyes that she watched?
Drink exempted him quickly, yet she might
continue in a mode of him, with him,
and soon remove else, if he returned to her. Sunday: The hazy, astonished people met.
Through spit and thorns and ash and molt,
love.

Unavoidable Paces

The blanks, having imparted their dime,
go on casting so long as their ten cents clink.
If in mail persists the impulse important,
everything descended, armfuls on the wire,
and dimes dropped into metal bins,
the clink and cast is in my mind,
the very linger of handless handshaking. You’ll long take in tingles, hungry, emphatic,
before any swift spider comes down his strand.

Lothario Mod

Short on the timid breasts of feebs,
and short at that earlier, primitive lounge innard,
the vinegar,
he wakes and leaves her mid-sting,
pillbugging into clothes and
pouring himself onto the times
and over every person of the era. Small, he has earned a name, blushing a weed
by the fence. He is to garden, some cuts
about trees, slip into a hammock
between the grass blades and sway and see
people, wave out and then snore,
the dreamingest olive to catch a bird’s eye.

Hemisphere

Up in the attic
on strange, lavender cotton,
boxes of things
and other things,
the cables and
works of great rats
near the bodies of mice,
still mice, neatly cleaned skeletons
of the mice that winter
in the discard of men.

Five Poems from Secret Lifes by
Rupert M. Loydell

The Secret Life of Anger

Shotgun wedding solemn tryst,
allophanic scramble of the world.

The discovery of photography,
a kind of excuse for a lie.

A site where choices are made,
constant negotiations with words

that never keep their promises.
The language of self-questioning,

time's involuntary flashbacks.
Walking alone through the storm.

The Secret Life of Books

Threshold spaces: the social
place of a text on the shelf.

I have a genuine interest in
traditions of dead generations,

am trying to find a new sentence
in the real city of language,

a shared vocabulary. What
is the author writing about?

A very inexact apocalypse,
on a particular kind of day.

The Secret Life of Children

Days are spent in small houses
with coloured books, mapping

the movements of rabbits and dogs,
rolling model cars down plastic ramps.

Everyone has a collection of acorns
and pretty stones from the beach,

each takes their turn to wear
angel wings, high heels,

sparkly dresses and scarves,
breathe wonder into the world.

The Secret Life of The Creek

Very high tide. Water overspills,
restructures the entire village.

Acknowledging river's existence,
we drive along the upper road,

remember our garage is full
of canoes. This time of year,

the creek's a felt presence we
start to understand, journey

a diversion and a lesson,
a new economy of habitation.

The Secret Life of The Dead

Tombstones and signposts,
terrible things that happened.

Owing death to the world,
he wasted time going native,

a slow life slowed down
to promote the unutterable,

embracing a religion
of resentment and denial.

Compulsive nomads, we still
traverse the desert of time.

Five Poems by
Jeffrey Side

Plaster Piece

The sky-blue plaster piece
you chose because I touched it,
you will always keep.
You like to spend the days with me.

The Sunday I first took you
on plastic with red button lens
you turned out well.
The air was cold, but it was shining.

And the round crowned church
held you in its circle
and calmed you at my side.

You take photos on the light.

Goldenrod

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
I watched you swimming in the forest.
And I watched you keeping your hands upon your knees.

You breathe like a scientist.
And your breath becomes the count of dreams.
You smell as sweet as the secondhand books you throw away.
And you write in longhand on paper before the woods run out.

And the caverns in the earth are not singing.
And I cannot walk around the laboratory.
And I cannot rest my fingers.
And I cannot stay in when the sun is out.

I used to think you were a gift to the experimenters.
I used to think you were a gift to the men fighting for their home.

Or the men who cry on the heath and moors.
Or the men who fall in the underground.
Or the men who wait for us when the clock stops.

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
The sun was escaping from your hair and your feet
were deep in the wet grass.

And your arms were filled with goldenrod.

Juliet

Wearing the Earth
like a robe,
I flew across the world
today.

I could see
the buried memories
hidden
in the trees,

and I could find
no one
to hurt
the two of us outside of
you and me.

I knew you when
you were nothing,

and then
I knew you when you were
something.

And then I met you
as you were
passed
from friend to friend.

Each one leaving you
alone
to weep in the
desert.

You had that look
in your eyes
that said tonight was
the day.

And I wish you had known me
when the sun was bright.

B Block

You keep your
services for them.
You keep
the church they know.

And they make
donations regularly
with
one hand on your head.

They lean you
down towards
the cup.
You sip the overflow.

You lick your lips
and move your fingers
far apart.

You have no town
inside you
now.
You have no
travellers there.

Did you send them home again?
Or did they leave for better fare?

I was the one who
landed upon
your
lessened wing.

You had me
and then you had
your king.

I came to you a broken ring
I danced inside
your mouth.

I gave you all my money
before you let me in

I couldn’t be a saviour now.
I couldn’t be
a queen.

I keep looking around
for things
I haven’t seen.

I seldom wandered in
your night.
I seldom took
the fall.

Now deep inside
I know
there’s no
one else to call.

When You Were Tempered With Delight

When you were tempered
with delight
your virtues were taken
down and forests
that you passed through
were not finite.

When you were
tempered with delight
you kept the
saddest oceans, you kept
the proudest streams.
And wild pens
would not strain your sight.

When you were tempered
with delight
you carried sand
upon your necklace and
cream upon your
lips. And you
never made the journey
through the park.

When you were
tempered with delight
you were
consumed by bikers in the light
and nurses in the dark.
And taut strings
pulled
on you forever.

When you were tempered
by delight
strong bars were held around
your fortress
and strong men could never
kiss the wound you would always hide.

Five poems by
Norman Jope

Portal
for Lynda; in homage to Gunnar Ekelöf, 1907-68

I look into the mirror and you're there,
smiling back, equally naked.
I raise a glass of water
with my right hand, in homage
and you, being left-handed
as well as my co-equal moon,
respond, of course, with your left.
Then you turn and walk
through the door of the looking-glass bathroom
to leave me, not without a face or body,
but with a doubling of what I had.
Modest and mute,
the mirror affirms
its secret alchemy.

Steps

An angel's footprints - at last.
Impressions in grass, in heather.
Behind, a harlequin of fields. An angel's immersion in a Here.
High ground, rain-wet. Luminous green
stretched past the cairn, in solid light. I had taken my love for a walk
for miles and miles, over swollen ground.
The lightest thing in the world can be raised by a thought. And under love's sun, the ground I walked
was made of adrenalin. I held her hand.
What kind of an angel sweats? Skylarks rose and fell, glissandi
as the sun licked rain from tors.
I held her hand with my crimson mind. The lightest thing in the world was the thing that made me.
The lightest thing for now, my love, puts lark song into my eyes.
So, this late, I haven’t come down. I measure the space between Venus and Mars
from a stone row, saying Here and Here,
buzzard-exalted, desire’s high kite - if angel, an angel of articulate clay,
if lover, a howler, wolf where there were none,
poised, in your wake, at the brink of all my skins.

A Dead Man Talking

Voices from the harbour
in fading light. Two children,
spaced a hundred steps apart,
call each other in a language
too far away to be known.
The sun sinks as they clamour
and I strain my ears, curious,
but still can't make it out
by the brightly-painted boats. What age will they be
when I die? I ask
looking north
to the harbouring dark.
When their voices fade,
the world is no-one's.
I carry its silence from time
and my death, a bell-tongue
sounds from my mouth.

Terrain

Three kingdoms are here, at hand,
their presence summoned to heart.
Each is lit from within, by steadily-burning lamps. Last night, I looked at the first, the oldest
and the Pleiades looked at Mars.
In the middle distance, a dog barked.
Big dog, little dog - the resonant, shining skies of noir. In the morning, I turned as I walked uphill.
Mica-squares of a village glittered under the mast.
Fog unfurled in the valley.
Morning was a presence, frostily perfumed. This was my country, orchard of the eye -
of the many beings, earth and air
and the fruits to come. Their juices
were like lightning, forked in my mouth. In the nervousness that lies four decades from death
I reached for a third. Your skin's soft ground.
And things were re-arranged. My gaze returned. I will try to live in the presence of these secrets
as they shine from themselves in self-concealment.
The moon wanes and in the valley
ice forms on reeds. Time takes new shapes. My terrain is completed by your lying here
as if the world had begun with your eyes,
the scent of your skin, half-cinnamon, half-blood...

in a life to be relinquished, but by no means exhausted.

Dethroning The Sun-King

The old man raises his voice
at the quivering earth -
true lord and monarch, his once-golden locks
turned white but flecked with lustre,
a celestial don of dons
with respect once assumed,
now craved. So lead him down
by his wrinkled hand,
give him a glass
of his mistress's milk,
sit him on a sofa
in a field of poppies
to bathe in the light
from her hair.

If you have any comments to make on these poems, please e-mail us at raunchland@hotmail.com

If you have any comments to make on these poems, please e-mail us at
raunchland@hotmail.com