Emily as the Predictable Question

Yes, she drew me in

as simply as a breath

& when she breathed

me out I was part

of the derivation 

of Emily, the world

that exists for everyone

else. I miss the before,

when her lungs

were making this me,

but it’s good to be

with you all.

How else could I mourn?

How else could I fight

my way back to her?

Emily as Well-Made Cake

I don’t need to be so modern

as to use plates or utensils or occasion,

I just need her in my mouth.

Emily as Obvious Beauty

Being simple, 

seeing good as a gift,

that re-made me.

Emily as Fifty-Seven Years Later

The frailties will be funny, too.

Death will be hysterical. Jokes we

barely remember, that’s oxygen.

All All #52

Now, now, now is when we sit on top

of America’s chest to see what 

good breath is left. No songs. No strutting

across the mythology of fields

with actual gods we blanketed

to smother. Just the weight of people

& a promise to bring back honey,

to bring back the drowning in honey

to the bee killers. Now. Now. Now. Now.

A Short Break

A short break, a space to think,
to work things out: his need
for order, her love of silence.
Outside, though the sun was bright,
the wind never stopped. Sand
hissed beneath the cabin door,
gulls skimmed the waves,
small birds flickered into bushes
after night flights over the ocean.
People drifted into the hard light.
Inside, he over-read each word,
he weighed every sentence.
They had never felt so far apart.
Each hesitation filled
with the hiss of the spring wind.
They ate at the kitchen table
while sand sifted over
the wooden floor.
The argument, when it came,
drove them back towards each other –
as if stopping
would be the end of them.

Metal Cabin

The cabin shook with a polar storm.
My son appeared on the laptop
and told me he was lonely
in his new job in the city.
Snow powder hissed
over the metal roof.
I turned up the volume.
He said he went to bars
almost every night
but always sat on his own.
I told him I was scared
of the guys in the control room.
He said he spent too long
in chat rooms
but there was nowhere else
to meet people.
Snow drifts pushed
against the windows.
I said I was always there for him
and when he nodded
I believed he was there for me too.

Technician

It was the first retirement party
I’d ever been to, and even though
they sang his praises, he was

always rude to me. Maybe
he used to be helpful and kind
but to me he was a bully,

resistant, angry. He was mean
about people who’d done nothing
wrong, yet on his last day

everyone had tears in their eyes
and said they would miss him.
Maybe he’d changed. Maybe

work had ground him down.
It’s 45 years later, and my turn
to accept a leaving gift.

My colleagues turn to the buffet
and fill their plates. I’m not sure
if I’ve upset them. I can’t tell

if I’ve changed or stayed the same.

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has appeared in Confluence, Dream Catcher and Smoke. Starlings came highly commended in the Rialto poetry competition.

A Living Canvas

It just occurred to me,

Life is a living canvas.

Paint your colourful emotions

Brilliantly!

Hermits And Answers

I quit taking the Medication

because it was stifling

the fantastic explosions 

inside my head.

There are now rumbling 

bass strings playing 

when I leopard-stalk 

down the street.

Manic gives the colours 

deeper understanding,

and patterns run the surface 

of almost everything.

Top hats were constructed 

for moods not occasion.

Audio hallucinations 

soundtrack abstract days…

and the shadows 

have minds of their own.

I stopped talking 

to that woman 

for no good reason,

it troubles her enough to frown…

she just reminds me 

of how I used to be,

and I’m far too much 

the fractured gentleman 

to explain.

I’m really not trying 

to annoy you,

merely get around you,

but your questions 

are blocking the way.

I’m not allowed 

to say that anymore…

there is nothing more offensive 

than the truth,

except maybe lies 

told with obvious insincerity. 

Hermits have all the answers,

but are coded 

to keep them to themselves…

some call that selfishness,

whilst I see only wisdom there.

Pastel Pockets Of Warmth

Deep inside her pastel pockets of warmth

I relax into foetal position,

rocking to and fro

contentedly,

rainbow coloured

and teardrop-shaped.

Nerve ends a-tingling and a-buzzing

a soft, humming symphony

of delicate hibernation.

Safe from the purple and black fray,

invasive thoughts and memories

kept in check

by her careful heartstring pulling.

Soul thumb sucking sighs, 

regressing back to neutral, 

a stripping away and cleansing

of the day-to-day unnecessaries.

Life’s batteries on full charge,

mind and action of limb on subtle standby.

I win another soft victory

with each precious moment not tampered with.

My water levels rise again

as to the universal buoyancy I reconnect

to suckle slowly at the nipples core

of an energy which lies

under the curtain hem of understanding.

A Rusty Butterfly

I saw this little butterfly the other day, 

it was so beautiful 

that I just had to stop and watch it 

until it flittered out of view.

It was a kind of powdery white, 

only not a thin, fragile sort,

but a thick, healthy kind, 

and it had rust coloured wings.

I’m serious,

I’ve never seen anything quite like it, 

it was perfectly white (almost too perfect) 

until halfway along the wings 

(that’s right, about there, yeah) 

and then it was a lovely orange, 

rusty colour… 

it was indeed magnificent.

I never thought rust was beautiful before, 

but the next time I see some 

I’m going to stop and venture a look,

and damn it, 

I might well discover something special.

And all because of that little butterfly 

which danced along the grassy verge 

of a busy city street, 

while everyone else refused,

or was too busy, 

to acknowledge its existence, except me.

That Then Led To This Now

A thousand feather-tips

tickling my Soul’s edges, silly.

Contentedness 

almost like drunkenness,

in from the cold 

and stamping my feet

enthusiastically 

upon the welcome

doormat of home.

An appetite fit for a King

and a Head and Heart

filled with a love

almost to the point of bursting.

Taxidermy Bride

In the cobwebbed shadows

of his long hallway

he sat nervously waiting

upon the partially broken

bottom 3^rd stair step.

A whistling excitement 

stirred up the dusty leaves

of his delicate, ornate mind.

As he peered downwards

at the Taxidermist’s card

beheld betwixt 

his porcelain slender fingers.

And read quietly to himself

‘Your parcel will be

delivered both promptly

and exactly at one and a half

minutes after 6 o’clock

of the evening’.

He gulped down wonder

and smiled deeply

with his eyes only.

As the grandfather clock

not quite 4ft away

struck the 6^th hour

and he heard the grind 

and clatter of his garden gate

yawning open in the distance.

He rose shakily,

and walked towards 

the front door,

each footfall a step further

away from Bachelor.

Rise!

When the self-proclaimed opposition idiot-grin

blindly in falsely supposed victories.

Nothing has your ‘Back’

except either the ‘Rock’ or ‘Hard Place’.

The cowardly gossips cluck

together with whip-cracking tongues.

And the morning’s become 

a solitary obstacle course

of both ‘Mountains’ and ‘Molehills’

to traverse and overcome.

Find Strength in your own Tenacity,

focus ‘Long View/Big Picture’

at the treacherous path ahead.

To Earn and Learn from those Battle Scars

you’ve got to bleed some.

There’s no permanent ruin

in ‘Mistakes Made’, ‘Temporary Failures’

and ‘Wrong Decisions Taken’.

They are merely a Platform 

to receive ‘Lessons Learnt’

and Shine your way through ‘Thick and Thin’.

It’s your Soul’s Determination, Fight 

and Uniqueness that those herds of sheep

are upset and intimidated by…

Ignore their petty, mocking bleats of envy,

Spring your Confident Step and Walk to Win.

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer. He yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight; this too may pass, yet.

His novel “Crazy Like Emotion” is published by Close To The Bone. Short story collection “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw”, “The Gutter Symposium”, “The Dark Side Of British Poetry” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are all published by Hunsbury Press.

when called on to read, 

I was in the same metabolic state

as Ham on take-off

        *

sparrows always at the fragile conjunction

of staying

or going

        *

he never knew the square footage

or the date of anyone’s birthday

        *

dandelion puff ball

going somewhere

without a wish

        *

I rode in the little yellow bus

with Der Witwer

        *

the nervous son of a nervous father,

taking the heat, the white stones refused

        *

who I think I am

in the teeming rain

        *

he was the genius

of nothing worth knowing

        *

mistrusting the rungs

of the ‘borrowed ladder’

        *

for my benefit,

Wednesdays and broken lifelines

        *

listening to Teen Angel

over and over again

        *

stopping him before he could say:

 ‘Sorry for your loss’

        *

she’s overprotective of caterpillars

and runny noses

        *

saying the distance between stars

as if I understand it

        *

the ones who laughed

behind my back

Bio: Patrick Sweeney is a short-form poet and devotee of the public library. 

Assurance Came Nigh

I laid in bed, pondering the day,
like a phantom unexpected, sleep took its way.
It was one of those dreams, vivid but just a moment—
imagery rising, leaving my mind in atonement.

I saw a man, burdened with life,
he was drowning in pain, so full his strife.
I saw him walking a field in the forest, shrubbery round him high.
He stopped and pled to God, and assurance came nigh.He emerged assured, leaving the wooded setting with speed,
his confidence high, God answered his need.
And I awoke seconds later, wondering why the short dream—
perhaps a vision, I woke with prayer in mind.

Blood In The Sand

Blood writing on the wall from the dead.

From the graves words come forth.

Blood of victims spread from one  dead to another.

Is my grave my  or just a memory of my life.

Blood from heroes of the dead is  stories tell how 

they die.

Off to battle on, history will tell how battles of heroes’ blood 

flows through their veins

Glory goes to dust as soldiers bled.

Blood gives us soldiers with victims of this battle.

While blood goes into a sea of death.

Rich men sit in comfort while blood is spilled.

Blood is the rich man’s dream to conquer to stamp out noblemen

from cultures that go unheard off .

Hope! It is an offer to please mankind .

The blood that’s being spilled is just a memory.  

Elaine Murray

July 29, 2004