destined
a tall thin man
dressed in a tatty floral frock
shuffles along these streets each day
i pace down them too
on trodden grime
we separately seek our own reasons
for these solitary rambles to anywhere else
but our current this in now
weeks of passing each other
without word spoken
no nod or flick of friendly smile
no wink or silly boyish smirk
just numb private loping
and it unhinges me
pulling me deeper
into my pulsating core
of constantly wondering
what and why
yesterday
as our paths collided
on a muddled corner of maybe fate
i glimpsed a reservoir of tears in his milky eyes
i’m sure he heard the plea for answers
screaming out of mine
today
i can’t face him
entwined in his inane crawling
or tread those confusing roads to naught
i can’t move from where i hide
wallowing in the realisation of existence
and i’m disturbed by him and his input
to my distorted analysis
for i know as i gulp at a gritty breath
we are both destined
to experience what we do
ongoing
until our end
death-songs
slaughter equals
what the fuck
is going on
without compassion
i’m no sage
just ardent vego
in this
killing mess
i cry when i see sheep
in a truck
stare hard
loathe reality
catching fish
is like a murder game
of swimming beauty
lost forever
cooking flesh
smells
like replaying
death-songs
no argument
for sake of hard words
flesh takers don’t listen
won’t notice
so we tolerate
their catching and killing
and breeding more
living meat
for in their accepted
butchery
we are the freaks
never them
unless and though
there’s nothing wrong with having a mouse on your head
unless an eagle sees it and swoops down to grab it
a run of relationship breakups isn’t so bad
though if they’ve taken your money it’s terribly upsetting
getting lost in a storm can be quite exciting
unless it’s below zero and you’re trapped in the snow
being totally broke is not the end of the world
though it’s extremely grim if you’re starving to death
camping alone in the jungle is a fabulous adventure
unless being stalked by a hungry tiger
not remembering who you are is no big deal
though it becomes complicated when filling out forms
never having a poem published means very little
unless you’ve spent your life trying to get poetry published
old age is natural and is just how life is
though it’s quite disappointing if you have never felt joy
as dying sits before us we attempt to avoid it
unless you’ve been waiting for the end of the journey
unless and though
can be used in countless ways
though it’s best to experiment with how
unless devoted to what’s correct
Stephen House
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright and actor, including two Australian Writer’s Guild Awgie Awards, and a Greenroom Best Actor nomination. He has had 20 plays produced, many commissioned. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. His chapbook “real and unreal” was published by ICOE Press. His next book is out soon. His poetry is published often, and he performs his acclaimed monologues widely.
Climate Change Catastrophe
Safer docking in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, waters in Yemen, pronounced, “Saffer.” About to rot or explode!
Potentially leaking gas fumes, and oil into these Arabian and Red Seas. The Houthis won’t talk to anyone but a few. The right actions to change this massive risk IGNORED.
And why?
Starvation 821 million, One in 9 people, children, malnourished.
Yemen, Haiti, Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Madagascar, Southern Sudan, Syria.
In a world where Overeating and cardiovascular disease are the number one cause of death.
IN A WORLD WHERE CHILDREN STARVE.
Mass displacements due to flooding.
Where in the world will these people go?
Their home awash with loss, destruction:
Brazil, 30,000 lives displaced.
Jakarta, 400 million meters of rain.
Pakistan 300 million lives displaced.
Kenya 1 million lives displaced.
South Korea, Vietnam, Nagasaki, Venice, Italy!
Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Zambia, 700,000 lives uprooted.
Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tennessee, California, Rwanda, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Turkey and all of Central America.
We have to open our hearts and minds to plan for the next thousand years!
We are in the midst of a real climate catastrophe.
By Tess Tyler, 11/19/ 2021
Knock Knock:
A Poem for Ukraine
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
I have walked from far,
Over fields of snow
And ice of roads
And cities at war.
I don’t know you.
Are there any with you?
My family is gone,
I don’t know where.
I’m here all alone.
May I come in?
I have a number
On my hand. Can I call?
Not on my land!
There’s a country
Down the road.
Try them there.
It’s far, and I’m cold.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
Can I come in?
I’m so tired,
And the wind is so cold. . . .
Why are you here?
What is that
In your eyes? Is it tears?
Is it sadness or fear?
No, it is ice,
It is melting there.
Go down the road.
There is nothing for you here.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
Can you say where I am?
I saw ghosts on the road,
They looked like my papa,
My mama, my sister,
My brother at home.
Has anything happened to them?
Will you please let me in?
I’m so tired, I don’t think
I can walk any more.
I can’t feel my hands.
May I come in here?
What is that number
Written out on your hand?
When I call, there is silence
At the other end.
Come in and rest
On my bed. No, it’s snow . . .
When you sleep you will never
Fear war again.
No, no, I must go,
How will I get home
If now I don’t go?
Come in and rest,
Come in and rest,
Come in and rest
Until you must go . . .
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Who knocked at our door?
Show yourself if you’re there!
But there was no one there,
Only the sound of the wind,
And the snow in the air.
The Sunken Palace
The curlew calls in the sycamore tree.
Do you hear it? A boy’s laugh follows.
A rustle of gold flickers over the lake.
The sky is cold and on fire.
Do you see the fair one, the kind one, the holy?
She is not to be seen on the tower.
There is only a shadow to be seen in the arch
And an iron gate as it closes.
He is gone now, and she is not here.
Their story, our story, is over.
The palace of love was a fable. The rain
Fell for long on the meadow.
At the season when the moon was a song in the snow
And the wind was a shout in the mountains,
The ghosts of the palace where the ballroom had drowned
Danced in a lake of shadows.
The Sound of Falling Trees
“There’s no such thing as ‘being a poet.’”
—T. S. Eliot
It used to be
an almost embarrassing compliment.
If someone called you that, you skipped
a heartbeat of secret bliss,
as if the most beautiful girl in class
had just blown you a kiss.
Now it is almost an embarrassment.
“Writers in San Francisco,”
New York and L.A. smile to each other
with a wink and a nudge. “Aren’t they all
poets? They can be safely ignored,
left to PEN and AWP,
unless you go in
for the penniest of penny stocks.
They can’t even make themselves any money,
let alone the likes of you and me;
they’re famous only if they die
(I know it sounds bold, but it’s so true) by
a monumentally gaudy suicide.”
It’s not much of a compliment anymore, yet
it is still a kind of destiny, a kind of fate:
a compulsive need to find new words
for old emotions, old and raw,
and make them ring like bells in the winter air—
clear and true and fading into oblivion—
the crash of trees falling deep in the forest
even when there is no one to hear.
_____
Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Calf-deep In Water At A Street Cafe
This city once had a different name
for years, the name of the General.
No one wants to remember it now but
you will find it when you least want to
on old maps on the second-hand bookstalls
cast-iron drain-covers, the back of the station.
The streets are hostage to a darker time
love-poems whispered on the back stairs
not printed in black and white.
Spring floods will sweep out the city's skull
that grim dust on the air
hanging in a thin sudden rain.
A drench of sun blots the page. Downstream
the old man's words form a foam on the coastal marshes
below a branch of flowering blackthorn.
Golden Goose
How did we ever get here? A Chinese dragon
formed in a mess of hot protostellar dust
no field is home
no stone is more than a shattered disc
caught in the auroral storms
of the second of September 1859, thrown from a train
I'm waiting for a wolf in the museum café
orbital motion of one arc-second per hour
there's a prickle of fear out in the west galleries
your sixth-form diaries, under glass in a dim-lit case
Nain had to lose her accent when she moved to London
"It was a terrible thing to sound Welsh then. Of course."
sticklebacks in the petrol tank, the manager wants you gone
epiphytic ferns on a sessile oak by the drover's bank
Old Brecon Bank, mackerel lines trailed into the Oort Cloud
fifteen in 1920, a generation missing
a startled hare racing through the gap between
tu mewn, tu mas, snooker on the telly
we wed a river, iron filings rearrange themselves
the palm of your hand was a map of the stars
that lost map of the forest, the one that had no core
I still need her to help me say Ystumllwynarth
there's a bear in there somewhere, Arth, Arthur
cynnu'r tân, the fire in Llŷn, we shall light such a candle
now I hear the wolf breathing on my neck, bad pixels
streaks and blobs and stress-fracture patterns
outside the museum there is literally no atmosphere
the near-zero chill of the trans-Neptunian plain, smoke
in tongues and the wolf lies down at your feet
curls around the rings that curl round your heart
Rhiannon and the North Wind
Flash-bulb bursts in a cloud of white magnesium.
Chameleon and chemist, she has no need to rush.
Setting sun on the Irish Sea, a gentle breeze on her back.
'Faster! Faster!' the Red King cries but never catches up.
Horsemen and horses die in foam beside the road.
Her spine is set in lightly-swaying stone.
In emerald beaded backless dress and riding boots,
leafing through a satchel of Dixie seventy-eights
her shoulder-blades jut out like embryonic wings.
Zeno and Newton join the chase. A bugle calls
the hounds of heaven spring from cages on the A470.
She hasn't broken a sweat yet, leans down to pluck a flower.
Three nights the chase goes on, dropping in in relays.
Rhiannon yawns prettily, sketches the sunset on her right.
Men drop gasping to their knees in lush green Dyfed fields.
In the darkroom the print is fixed and hanging up to dry
but there in gelatin-silver she is still a frantic blur
glass plates no more than men could ever catch her.
This wild hunt decimates only the pursuers
casualties are high in erotic metaphor.
One little glance and smile behind, then on she trots.
Philosophy of Travel
is the annihilation of distance
or the echo of desire
even the concept of capital
the birth of each new day and its death
the pompous something of something else
something you never heard of
an alligator's song, a high-heeled shoe
hung on a swamp fence, ultramarine
the tinny whine that starts inside my ear
if I'm alone too long or too quiet
the money of love, the love of honey.
Four hundred miles between, I study guide books
suggest meeting one day in a cathedral town
imagine the early starts and the last trains back
the loafing of cloisters, the dunk of biscuits
the ache and the treasure, the listening
the little gifts, the brush of fingers
you know I mean the kiss. You
Geoff Sawers’ most recent publication is ‘Silver In My Mines: Peter Hay’s work for Two Rivers Press 1994-2003′(Buffalo, New York, 2022). Born in 1966, he was only diagnosed as autistic in his fifties. He lives in Reading (UK).
The Flower Goddess
She sat there everyday
In her field of flowers.
If she was lucky, a human would pass by
chatting and laughing with a loved one
sometimes they’d even take her flowers!
to remember, and make themselves happy
When they were done, they would leave
and she would sit alone again,
alone in her field of flowers.
One day felt different, however,
there was a weird smell in the air
she didn’t mind though,
but her flowers did.
The next day smelled like that too,
and the next,
and the day after that.
She never saw any humans anymore,
and her flowers started to wilt away.
She did all she could for them,
until one day, she passed out.
When she awoke again, she was confused
Where were her flowers?
Why were there big gray clouds coming from weird machines?
Why were there bottles and wrappers everywhere?
What was happening?
Her flower field!
Her Beautiful flower field!
Why? she began to cry!
Her tears dripped to the floor
The Dry, Dead, Grass
the land was not ready for her tears!
Those machines wanted to destroy the planet.
Fine! So be it!
Her tears lit the grass aflame
It all burned to nothing
…even her
Silent flames engulfed her…
As The Flower Goddess ceased to exist.
By Lizbeth Garcia-Lopez, age 12
Scriptures
today,
i'm plaiting these words
with the hands of affection
& rooting it in the palms of love
frankly,
i miss you
from the day you accepted my citizenship in your heart
every part of me has always thirsted for you
like a baby
i'm still learning how to speak
for my lips holds the memory of our first kiss
every time
your presence resides in the chest of mine
the glances of your smile fill my heart with joy
truth be told, i have painted your smile all over my heart
to shimmer my many scars
i wish i could clay myself into a wind
sail over to you & wrap you in warmness
whenever you are far away from me
that i may always be nearer to you
if loving you becomes a sin
i will nail our bond to God's Word
clay you like a rib & place you back into me
for eternity is our bond
The Love for Humanity: The Hatred for War
The death of innocent souls in wars
makes matter worse
Why should the mighty push for such human disaster
over a trivial matter?
When a nation of great strength wages war
against 'a lesser' that once shared territorial grounds more,
It creates unhealthy concerns for the rest of the world
as the loss of lives and property would become seriously odd
Experimenting with bio weapons
at the expense of innocent lives in those nations
Is stretching humanity beyond its threshold of peace
to the point of embracing the purpose of unease
What is the gain of disturbing peaceful coexistence
If not witnessing the pain of disturbance?
Let the powers that be give a second thought to their action;
for the future would assert the reaction
Humanity craves for rest of its rest
So, it would be unpalatable to disturb that crest
Truth be told,
Regardless of who seem to be at fault,
War should not be what is to be looked as fought
There is always a ground of reconciliation
an understanding of co-operation,
a place for dialogue,
a method of taking out lingering backlogs,
an eventual resolving of differences,
a viable approach to avoid in future sitting on defense,
The love of mankind is paramount
So, war must be in a state of surmount!
