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Colin
Last updated: February 2, 2012
2012
January 2012
There’s Nae Hurdies Oan A Canapé
Ah used tae love a muckle plate
Warm-reekin’, rich - man it wiz great
On Rabbie’s Day it’s a tradition
Noo ah’ve made o’ it ma mission
Tae find the gowk wha’s hud the nerve
Tae turn oor dish intae a wee hors’doeuvre
A rustic knife ye dinnae need
Fur a teaspoonfu’ oan some toastit breed
Nae juicy entrails gushing bright
Jist piped potatoes – whit a sight!
Yer no a chef, yer a disgrace
Ah’d like tae pit ye in yer place
Ma nieve clenched roon aboot his ... collar
Intae his mug ah’d howl an’ holler
An’ send him packin’ – oot the door
Then mibbe he’ll think twice afore
He serves me up a teeny helpin’
The eejit really needs a skelpin
D’ye think that Rabbie served his Nancy
Wi haggis turned intae sumthin’ fancy?
Or drizzled a’ ower it his whisky
Flambeed?
Thon wouldnae mak ye frisky
Ah’m afraid
Sae tak yer goujons and quenelles
Yer pomme de terre and purees
Ah’ll hae nae crème on ma assiette
Or fricassee
This stuff is fit tae mak me spew
I’d rather hae some French ragout!
Ah’m fair seek o’ yer measly ware
Hankerin’ fur some hamely fare
Ah’m scunnered, an’ ah’m stervin
An’ ah’d like a decent servin
So – if ye dinnae want a Glesca kiss
Gie me tatties, neeps an’ haggis
Copyright © Madelaine Cave, 2012
News of a friend
The salt museum is closed
its quiet yard and expositions
surrounded by salt marsh
the uneven car park
the only child’s entertainment
fields of water and their channels
inaccessible across a culvert
promising an explanation
metal pipes and drainage
it is almost clear
how the sun burns away the sea
and the salt appears
an ancient method of reduction
your death four years on
a door one cannot get through
a distillation not noted
because life kept us busy
the industrial lagoon tended
valves open under sun
and amongst martins
the protection of loose overalls
soaked by sweat, visors,
concentration on process
raking the personal mine.
Copyright © Bridget Khursheed, 2012
Chevalier
A woman unravels an elegy:
couplets of dark pitch, ink, velvet.
She unstitches hands turned
down in sorrow and shakes them out
between her sleeves, she unpicks
hem, lips, wrists, the syllables arcing
like the wine-coloured lobes
of the Sycamore fig,
the pale threads untangling
ruined and silver. In medias res,
she bends down to uncoil the last of you –
the plum gossamer of your wounds
ribbon round her fingers. And I catch
your quarter note grief
as she gathers up needle-box and bone,
as she turns away to forget
the dark spool of your winding sheet
and the way her blood pricked
the lilacs of your annihilated body.
It is done. Finished. She is inhabited, now,
by a silence whose skeins twist and let loose
on the wind; a silence unravelling
itself in tense, taut elisions. Stopping in the cloister,
she scuffs the silk from her hair
and sees that no one will remember
her marked finger-tips, or the precise notes
of her desire pitched to accent
the slow rise and fall of waiting for you
to crook down your heart in the storm.
Copyright © Davina Allison 2012
The Cloutie Well
Walking to the Cloutie Well
Breath rose and fell
And hung upon the morning air
Like an ancient ghost
Spirits linger here you feel
In forest clearings soldiers kneel
Weary warriors pierced by swords
Watched over by pine sentries
Their faces lit like Jacobite gold
Woven leaves abound
Through morning mist the only sound
Is your pounding heart
And tiring feet upon the ground
Who mourned the fallen then?
Who wished they would arise again?
The earth revolves, breathe in, be strong
And carry on
To the Cloutie Well
Copyright © Jules Gilmour, 2012
The Forth Bridge
Heads held high above our water wings
we do quick breast strokes in the cold brown sea.
Mouths tight shut -
jobbies have been spotted sidling by.
We sit on rugs with aunties
for a chittery-bite of salty crisps
and tepid Thermos tea.
Above us, the Bridge is braced for trains.
The rumbling starts. The Diesel hoots.
We shriek and run for cover.
From pennies, thrown for luck
and passengers’ jobbies, carelessly flushed on our heads.
Squashed into the back seat with the aunties,
we sing Ten Green Bottles all the way home.
Safe and successful, and unaware
that life’s shit gets worse than flying jobbies.
Copyright © Elspeth McLean 2012
For my Father, in the style of Robt. Burns
Now that spring has calmed the wind
We’ll go out on the ocean, O,
And give his ashes to the waves
Who still has our devotion, O.
We’ll anchor off the southern shore
Where he would watch the breakers, O,
From the rocks at Brenton’s Point,
Those rugged, weathered acres, O.
All of you who waste your days
In useless wealth amassing, O,
You’re not as rich as one good man
Whose children mourn his passing, O.
Copyright © Emily Burns, 2012
Pewl
A man stauns by his gairden yett
amang the warld he is fae;
fair taigelt an fair taivert wi
the samen warld’s adae
A sea maw nears the hoose aa quate
the man respecks as his bield;
it lands upon the riggin heid
an thare begins tae reel
The man mair mad swith leuks the maw
“ Ach stap yer skraich! ” he crys oot
“ Cum nar wi langage kent an lown
an tell me whit ye shout”
Tae answer sae the maw cums doun
an sattles on the ae post;
wi glowrin een it leuks the man
an syne begins tae bost:
“ Ma vyce is leal tae God ’ s ingine,
that made it perfit an slee,
sae gif ye finnd it angersum
yer mynd maun be ajee”
“Ma wird is juist for myne ain kynd;
it’s seen ye ’ r no onie maw
It’s you that deaves wi pauchtie wirds;
whit gars ye gange an blaw?”
The man is shent tae hear the burd,
the richtness o its repone,
an nou he maun explain hissel,
sae thus he daes expone:
“ This warld haes monie tungs tae uise
an monie souns for tae mak,
but ma twa lugs ir no aneuch
tae ken the hail warld’s crack”
“ An sae the ither wuts A hae,
this unco warld tae comprise,
tae ken it hail in aa its pynts
thai fail at aa devise”
“Wi aa tae see A git a glisk,
wi aa tae smell juist a gliff,
wi aa tae gust A get a peck,
wi aa tae titch, a skiff”
“An whit for wark an turns an aa
an whit for sleep an for rest,
i maugre o the time A git
baith day an nicht is fest”
“Forby aa that whan A’v a mynd
tae ken this warld wi ma wit,
een free tae lay ma brains asteep
A canna git a grup o hit”
“Sae weel thir hatters haud me doun
thai haud me doun daily day
wi no the mean tae ken this warld
i front o ma decay”
“A ’ m fair frustrate tae be sae scrimpit
an no tae hae the remeid;
like be-in anely hauf i life
the muckle feck as deid”
“O whit a tift tae git yersel,”
repree’d the lichtlifu maw,
“ye meat yer menseless, massie mynd
an gie yersel a staw”
“Hou weel a man mismaks hissel
whan aa the warld he wad hae
A guttie gorb is niver gled
but aye wull git him wae”
“Tak tent tae this A tell tae ye,
for gif ye listen an heed
ye'll hae the mean tae redd yer fash
ye'll hae the richt remeid”
“This warld is made wi meiths an mett
i maiter an i the mynd;
its substance is its stentitness;
it’s meant tae be that kynd “
“An sae for man, maun be for man
that he is stentit an fey:
ye'r here tae leive a stentit life
an in a stentit wey”
“Wha kens for why ye walk this warld
an whit this warld tae ye brings,
but gin thare’s ettle tae yer life
the moyen's stentit things”
“Sae whyle ye mell wi meiths an mett
this warld wull aye gie ye wae,
an onie mint tae life thair be
ye'll niver win tae dae”
“Accep an leive this stentit warld
an aa its weys as thai be;
accep an leive yer place athin
an wi this warld ye'll gree”
An wi thir wirds the maw flew aff,
sum ither wey the burd gaed,
an presentlie the man begoud
tae think on whit it said
Copyright © Hamish Scott 2012
MIXED-HEART MAINE
(SEWING WITH OLD POINTS)
Sharp, the way bone and horn splinters served, and quills,
until metal people brought theirs in their bodices with other
jewel tools. The way your Scots hurt, too, Bear, blistering
their skin living here. Stitching together necessities for use
and art though never calling it that until museums said wait
and saved it.
My worn hands can’t punch this needle the hundreds of stitches
it would take to outline your wedding at that dear shore
along Birch Stream the way I still see it, though it’s my longest,
finest-pointed one with an eye wide enough to carry the floss
the way our eyes were wide in witness that day taking it in,
still seen. Oh there was a day as you know, how I could’ve
embroidered the whole rite – you and Susanne in her willow-
natured gown, her hair a long reed-gold breeze. You, a dressed up
bear in a same-shade shirt, rising tall the way our black bears do
to behold this heaven that is earth, opening your Spirit Hill robe
to her. Your hands bound with sweetgrass the way Scots
and Indians still do who reclaim the old clan ways, as if the same
country because the same continent once split in two.
Beloveds, I can’t picture all that on this chamois leather
with your family, even Hans and Sarah and Alex, Mama and us,
without my fingers bleeding and back knotting, my arm already
throbbing, though I would for the joy of that day if I didn’t know
you two will look at your hands here, traced from those echoes
to this, and ever, and how your fingers are laced the way they were
that day, and ever, and you’ll fill it in with own memoried threads
whether I finish this or not but look how much I could do.
Let it be a small shawl for your hard nights and days
for I have lifted it each dawn over these fields you have loved,
to infuse and empower it with my hands, praying for strength.
A sacred skin from love blessed that day and all our days
for I have cradled it in the smoke here in the yard you have loved
that it will carry this place to you to tell you you shall always
be here, this place always with you.
The fur-black and birch-green felt hands you two let me trace
around yours, braided together and appliqued anciently to sign
where you were and why and who else saw and heard, hold
the vision though I can stitch only this much.
Let it be your comfort, your medicine, your health
to cover your heart or rest your head. Look at it and see
all my hands couldn’t sew – the water you became together,
the other shore you reached with its standing people applauding,
the eagles we all willed to bring ancestors.
And when it comes time in the flow of time for which there is
no word, when we can no longer see, whether through tears
or other natural veil, touch it the way you did her and
hear John Bear declare you wed again, and again,
even when we all are gone. All my relations.
Copyright © Patricia Smith Ranzoni, 2012
Acceptance
I still wait
for that answer
to my prayer that
would break this
dark silence -
Glass Dragons
did not break
at the first words -
Playing with sunshine
patches, they became
part of the sun
and broke his rays
into rainbows –
Their breath became air,
Their eyes became moons
that danced in light
and wept in shadow -
Words did not make sense
to their wordless world,
where each smile was
a trophy and tantrums, a
battle for understanding –
Only their silence burned
A mother’s heart.
Copyright © Usha Kishore, 2012
The Lady Novelist
The lady novelist writes best when pissed.
She strides in wellies down a shingled beach,
then dresses for her curry night in ten
quick minutes, whipping on her cords,
her Oxfam beads, some much-prized lacy drawers.
She gets her ideas anywhere, in pubs,
in Sunday sunshine on the old sea wall,
within her garden when the light falls through
upon the bramble and the sun-dial
she rescued from the tip and painted blue.
She craves that book, that one big joyful book,
to give them all her final glorious tilt
at prudes and artifice and hurt and guilt.
Reviewers praise her heart. They rightly should.
Sometimes she sings aloud with sheer content.
She flirts, she laughs, she stirs the social mix.
The lady novelist writes best when pissed.
Copyright © Robert Nisbet, 2012
Tiger 100 1962
Dad’s Triumph Tiger.
(this child’s desire).
Kicked into life
now breathing fire.
Twist of throttle.
Tweak of choke,
the Tiger growls
then burns up the road.
Copyright © Dave Walkinshaw, 2012
2011
December 2011
Living by Leaves
Flick through the leaves
where veins plough the mire,
form fields, divide compartments,
order the story, a map
gathered and pressed firmly
into spiny clutch.
Plot points of pleasure:
birthdays, holidays, day trips, barbecues,
marriages, music, song and dance;
Motorcycle Diaries, Calendar Girls;
seeds planted, harvests reaped
right place, right time
celebrate the backbone of life.
The moon remains unfazed
by ripples that ruffle the glaze of joy.
Night comes, night goes
tread with caution, take care,
appoint one place, one time
and thus avoid splinters.
A leaf flutters past the window of my eyes,
shuttering today’s treasures,
archiving my life.
Copyright © Rita Bradd 2011
Through the earthquake
The chamber fills with sombre cinematic celebrity;
Stop all the clocks; shop at the Coop.
Elemental odours waft on waves of infra red and cosmic blue;
Earth’s birth’s backing track is extraterrestrial muzak.
The ground shakes beneath us; prehistory is happening around us;
The Big Bang bangs and the stars populate the heavenly hall.
In our time machine, our companions are
Two men in black, solemn and still;
Al - Mukhabarat? On second thoughts, not.
Theirs is a dry and antique land,
Written on tablets by Gilgamesh;
Whilst ours was carved into terraces by ice
From high above a peat blackened loch
Down to a slate grey sea.
Sometime after the big bang, as I understand,
The oceans were formed.
Remind me just how many million years were spent
Building the abyssal plain, the oceanic trench?
From the sunlit Epipelagic
To the twilit Mesopelagic
The water column drops, the pressure pops
Down, down, deeper on down, to Hades itself
Where, in a darkness more undiscoverable than space,
Monstrous feeling creatures scrabble in the dirt to find a mate.
Meanwhile, happily on the shores of Panthalassa, peals
Of children’s laughter as they take to their heels.
From now on the centre cannot hold
The attention of the eight-year old.
Sub atomic sparks will fire her
Round the great Hadron Collider:
- Granny! Come see the dinosaur.
- But dinosaurs aren’t due for ages.
- Granny! Come see the Sabbath toothed tiger.
- Oh, Mr Sabre tooth, have we met before?
Dome show in three minutes. Roll on up for the spectacle
Space: the final frontier, one hundred kilometres from here
Where men will boil and freeze; their bones decay and muscles whittle
But fearless we adventurers, like Columbus, before us,
Go shopping to buy ammonites and fool’s gold in a bottle.
Copyright Ingrid A Murray, 2011
Midwinter
Spurning the road’s gravel
I turn to the open park,
printing a line of spidery foot-writing.
The mid-twilight fog
amplifies each papery crunch
of snow-on-snow,
each foot falls sharp
past the ghosts of swans
and submerged beer cans,
the unswung swings and slides
glint in the dusk:
abandoned machinery
still creaking with the memory of
movement, of displaced weight
the thrill of gravity.
I look out - winter spreading through the city;
sparse stanzas of birds drifting
into the middle distance,
blended notes bouncing on pond water:
a still, sad music; a wailing choir.
Light drawing in, free of haze.
Copyright © Roddy Shippin, 2011
ROSES FOR CRIANLARICH
These roses are not crushed or repentant.
Blood-scarlet, the petals sculpt time. Moments
slip by, a clock ticks, the refrigerator drones
and the iced-rain loosens in slow drips to earth.
Do they ask me to punctuate or unburden;
neither or both, in what measure? I am uncertain.
There is a road from Tarbet to Crianlarich, a low
pass to chase and patience are what one needs.
Keep your eyes wide for dark clouds stretch out,
asleep in the heavens, as if they, too, hibernate.
Shut, like oyster bivalves fed to insomniacs,
how we dreamt of morning's pearl. Watch close,
if the road bends or narrows, if your bag is heavy.
Nothing counts but the tramontane wind blowing
from the north. Nothing, but driftwood, are we;
so downy the little ducks might teach us obedience.
Poor spidery sepals affix the rose petals like arms
crossed for the clutching buds. There is a language
for each knuckle of mountain this sear light held.
A language tramped this way and was made captive.
Copyright © Michelle Cahill 2011
November 2011
At Loch Awe Station
For those alighting at Loch Awe,
please note:
I cannot love her more.
Leafless branches
tag the windows of the carriage,
little leg sheep
scurry up the slope,
running from the train,
trees creak
with good humour
and everything
shows its tiny beauty.
The platform is all leaf
and knows that I adore.
But, I cannot love her more,
as all should know,
alighting at Loch Awe.
Copyright © Seth Crook, 2011
Gull
A yellow-eyed gull
clocks me, askance,
from a wire above its Newhaven shore,
as if I’ve caught it thinking out loud -
talking to itself,
while no one was looking.
As if it had just woken up;
voltaic - the nightmare still fresh,
or had its conscience pricked
for pecking the flesh out of
the back of a whale.
My presence is of no concern.
There is no credence given.
It knows it has the gift,
the edge over us. We’re
outside all this -
adlittoral beings,
isolated from the bigger grid.
We should know
the gull’s recurring dream
involves a drowning.
Copyright © John Irvine, 2011
The Twenty-Eighth Year
No fife can charm
A call to arm
When war is won
Its winter gone
And merit wears a ribbon.
No schools to find
No wounds to bind
Now love is warm
Yet with what pain forgiven?
Copyright © Sidney Irvine, 2011
Twelve Bells of Selkirk
Returning from the deep south
Hot shot from a trade show
Sharp suits and fake smiles,
I drive North
The M6 snakes it's way past
Smog choked milk bottle industry
City lights fade behind me
Dark mountains loom, sudden as clouds
Landscape appears
Moon washed, I cross the border
On the road that I know best
The twelve bells of Selkirk welcome me home
I walk from my hired car
To your front door and I am
Stoned by the peace and stillness
And the pine night air
You welcome me in with open arms
Sinking into your life again,
momentary but blissful
We fall together.
Warm clean kisses
Deep holy love
Copyright © Joan Greig, 2011
Hard Ground
Winter sun,
gorged on frost
grass shatters - frozen
Hard Ground
no give
What cannot bend is broken
Frost hangs
curtains all
Hard Air
rimes the senses
copyright © mjlogue 2011
THE DAY OF THE DEAD
I burn Mexico.
I have lit the old candle
which I got six years ago
in Cuernavaca.
So much love
in the eye of a flame.
It is as though -
those I hold most dear,
and can never hold again
are here.
It is as though, the petals
of a thousand yellow flowers
are scattered
between earth and heaven.
Copyright © Maureen Weldon 2011
WHISPERING GRASS
Sandy was working in the London docks
when first he became famous.
He happened upon a container
of jute sacks from Afghanistan,
recognised the musky aroma
and thought his ship had truly come in.
In the back garden of the shared house,
he planted the seeds, covering them with jars.
The summer was long and hot.
Soon the plants emerged vigorous and strong.
The only people using the garden
barely gave them a glance
as they swayed and urinated onto the foliage.
At last the harvest moon shone bright.
Within hours of a secret sampling
the overnight bus from Scotland
was filled with mates, old and new.
The party began and the story drifted into folklore.
Sandy had produced a super grass
unknown outside of Trench town Jamaica.
If this is what a few seeds could produce,
he reasoned, he had a pocket full of wealth.
The next year he returned to Scotland
and in the summer cultivated a plantation
at the back of his remote cottage.
He could not reproduce the same results.
The plants that he had grown in his Brixton garden
had developed roots like swamp trees.
they had tapped into the main drainage system
and fed on an international multi-cultural effluence.
Scottish sheep shit just didn ’ t match up.
Copyright © J.M.Brown 2011
Two poems by dave migman
machismo
slinging over shoulder
a rifle
a belt full of
bullets
then off
to the dead trees
to down a couple
of morning songs
over ouzo
at the mountain taverna
recounting
the hunt
the milky coloured
suckled pig
opens a bag
filled with
coloured wings
If you sit still and listen
If you sit on the mountain
in spring you can smell
the sage in bloom
it permeates the air
like a mist
and the old tracks of heroes
are faint lines scored in each flank.
When the sons of Apollo
picked their way
along each brow
the caves echoed their muse
down gullies
like white wine
Now the bars spill out
a hypnotic pulse, and
young bloods want fast
cars and flashing lights
to lure the fishes
ashore while the old men
with hands of bronze
tend the land with teams of mules
copyright © dave migman 2011
October 2011
A Dale in the North
A vast oil terminal at Sullom Voe;
it crouches over Yell, a lunar beast.
Hear tales of lang sin syne, cutting peats,
prayers at white St. Magnus, Hamnavoe.
See Shetland ponies grazing, West Sandwick,
from Dale of Quam to Unst at Belmont House.
At Muckle Flugga see Stevenson's lighthouse,
St. Olaf's Kirk at Lunda Wick.
At Keen of Hamar lunar serpentine;
an MOD station, the highest hill;
a perfect viewpoint, skerries, northern lights.
The morn's morning, return to Lerwick time;
the haunted windhouse, an eternal chill;
we pass Mid Yell, Whalefirth on right.
Fresh eggs and bacon, butter, toast and jam;
a Shetland welcome, warmth and tunes, at Quam.
Copyright © Cynthia Stephens, 2011
After All We'd Done for Him
Seamus left, and left behind, as usual
an assortment of goods.
We wondered how he defied natural
learning processes so consistently
with the amount of education he'd had
but then, he was a busy man.
Sunlight on the rooftops
belied the coming snow
and Seamus's spectacles waited in the corner.
He's sure to arrive soon, we said.
It's so unpleasant to travel in winter
this year with all these cancellations.
The new year was dark and freezing
we don't blame him, we said, for staying away
not in this awful weather
and the heating on its last legs.
Isn't he in China? Or Greece?
They have winter there too, Chris pointed out.
Spring came, sullen and petulant
and, with it, the figure of Seamus.
Long time for old friends, we cried,
submerging him in hugs, glasses restored.
Yes, he said, beaming, I am terrible, do excuse
but look! I am engaged to a wonderful woman.
Blank silence filled the sitting room.
Well who's she then, we said to ourselves.
Copyright © Joy Everett, 2011
Copyright © Eileen Farrelly, 2011
The quiet room
You wince under the wait's added load.
Squashed seating arrangements anticipate
breasts squeezed into scanners.
We are blind to fresh flowers, pastel curtains and carpets.
Receptionists and nurses maintain the default cheeriness
of shopping channel presenters but
fear runs amok amongst us
strangling our instinct to chat.
The pages of ‘Hello’ are turned with shaking hands,
eyes skim bikini clad celebs,
whilst we strain for a bustling nurse to pop her head
around the door and sing your name.
A girl in Sainsbury’s uniform nuzzles
her boyfriend’s shoulder.
It must be confusing for men,
this switch from ‘Carry On’ fondling to
reluctantly tracing a lump insidious as an IED.
Afterwards, we watch other women liberated by
‘Every thing’s fine you can go’
But for one woman, the nurse in sotto voce voice,
‘Would you come through to the quiet room?’
My eyes meet yours,
we remember boxes of tissues and the private exit.
15 minutes trudge by.
‘For God’s sake’
You re-cross legs, switching your coat about you,
I sit with every muscle clenched.
Discharged suddenly, we scurry from the building, high on relief.
I slam the car door on the nurse with the valium voice
and her open invitation for me to join her in ‘that room’.
Copyright © Fiona Sinclair, 2011
Two poems from Robert Nisbet
Traditionalists
The night before his first ‘O’ level,
Hodge coming with us to the King’s
for crisps and under-age cider. Saying,
walking home, he was now getting
the shits up for tomorrow. Jinks,
late for seven prep periods out of ten
that summer term, returning from the
snooker hall, been finishing his game.
Three decades since laid waste and
Hodge and Jinks are neighbours now
in Merlin’s Lane, send fledglings
to the local comp. Nightly, they rail
at sloth, praise swotting’s probity.
Meanwhile, evenings, they dream of
scrumpy fests and beer gardens, the
sweetest kiss on Jinksy’s blue,
nestling now in the centre pocket,
in off the pink.
Second Language English
My father, swaddled in a sweet
childhood on a Hebridean isle,
where the scrubby machair ran down
to a fine white sand and, in the
summer, the cow pats curled to the
texture of tobacco, there, when he was
five and at school, learned English.
His friend Archie Somesuch, later
to be captain of the Queen Mary
or the first man in space or something
(or so my father said) was asked (by now
they were eight) to write ‘an essay
on farming’. Three minutes on, Arch held up
his work in progress – read out with
every certainty and self-content:
The farmers keeps sheeps.
Decades on, in Dewi Sant, just
a mile from the cathedral’s sweet
ambience, I taught Welsh speakers. In
the manner of the time, I asked,
‘What is the opposite of cold?’
One lad knew, at once and absolutely.
Better, he said. (Right. Let’s not
rush to judgment here.) ‘Why better?’
I asked. He looked relaxed with
reason’s flow. Last week I had a cold,
he said. And now I’m better.
Copyright © Robert Nisbet, 2011
A Parallel Poem: Poppies
Each is a pair
Of round lips
Cut right in the middle
Bleeding boldly
Against the autumn wind
Nothing to kiss
Nobody to talk with
Except some small recollections
Of blood-skirted pasts
Painted thickly
Close to the heart
Copyright © changming yuan, 2011
Changming Yuan lives in Vancouver, Canada
AT ROSA’S WEDDING
At Rosa’s wedding
mandolin and accordion
music soaring like
a falcon, sharp as the
razor’s blade, keen as
the kestrel’s claws
At Rosa’s wedding
gypsy violin and tambourine
music screeching like
a barn owl, in the
stillness of nightfall
passionate as the nightingale
At Rosa’s wedding
flute and Spanish guitar
music weeping like
a widow, by the embers
of a dying fire
mournful as the cockcrow.
Copyright © David Subacchi 2011
September 2011
And a flurry of new poems at the end of September:
Accent
I listen to his intonation
the enunciation of his accent – and I
find myself captivated by his words. The way he
compresses his lips,
the way he rolls his tongue –
I know he wonders why I do not speak,
but just sit in a daze over my coffee cup
staring at the movements of his mouth and
hoping his fountain of poetic dialect runs deep.
I want to him to chatter on, to continue his one-sided
tete-a-tete. I want him to tell me all about the simple clichés –
how much he enjoys the sunny weather in the middle of a December
chill, the way the river seems to sing as it flows through the valleys of Fife,
how the grass yellows alongside the dandelions death, the way he can sit and listen to punk while reading Jane Eyre, how he would rather drink wine in the morning and coffee at night, or how he could care less about politics and religion or what novel sits on the nightstand beside his bed. I imagine all of these things as I hope to find a way to keep his words coming. Beautiful, poetic, words – long, drawn, undulating, lyrical – but, alas – he stops and the inevitable occurs. He asks me about myself – and I am at a loss for anything but silence.
Copyright © Gwendolyn Scott 2011
Insomnia
It starts with a shiver
a decision to add
more layers -or not
sip water to soothe
your dry throat
baked with the blanket
Alaskan without
wind through the letter-box
makes you start
every mattress spring resists
tired muscles awake
with a marathon
inside your head
watching the sun-dial
move across the wall
as rays drip through
the crack of the door
and the leaking window ledge
Copyright © Fiona Dixon, 2011
Lapworth at Smoo, 1882
Nuggets of deep time gleam before him,
unburied, naked in the salt air as faultlines
unfold before his eyes through clefts
carved by wave and burn. They echo:
what is old is above, what is old is above,
the walls tell him, past catastrophes now,
and time slows into geological tics as
breached strata compact into a new idea
unearthed as if it were always there and it was
only he who had the wit to see passed
devils and highwaymen, blowholes all, to
where complex folds show irruptions of ages.
Copyright © Will Slocombe, 2011
FURIOUS MORAY GRANITE
From furious Moray granite we are hewn.
Cut from the same rock. Similar and yet not.
Distance and distrust a dividing line
between us. An indifferent border cut
in perfect repetition of your father
and you. Cast iron. We are on strike.
No emotion or connection to furnish
a charge. At absolute zero, nothing is at stake.
But now that distance hardens like winter,
I wonder: how will I feel once you are
in the ground? Will then some feeling bite?
Will I feel your shadow, a ghost in the air
asking who the hell are we so broken and cold
with our empty iron hearts frozen to stone?
Copyright © Clive Birnie, 2011
Scotland II
A sober man has not the strength to look at a thistle.
Sobriety quietly yearns.
A sober man has not the depth to ponder a future,
Or have Scotland settle his earthly concerns.
Where do we go from here? What is to come
Of me within you, in you, here and now?
The solitary plight in one man’s sum
Of rhyme and reason creases on my brow.
Like sweat in winter, outcast by the self,
I sit, I crouch, and crawl from bed to bowl.
This box is stutter stained by glass, the serf
My conscience specified, to catch the soul’s
Transfusion red to street. It drips and slides,
It split my very sides when sadness swept
So close. Dear Scotland, will I ever hide
The condemnation, nailing my inept
Existence? Will I ever find the time?
Dear Scotland please prepare my earthbound lime.
It just goes on and on…
Copyright © Barry Miller, 2011
Two poems by Kevin Cadwallender
Sea Burn
(for Marjan)
After a few days of rain
the sun erupts from the sea
reasserts itself, burns skin.
I walk behind Bunting
on a beach with a Persian woman.
Singing the old driftwood song
that I picked up from waves.
Some days are ancient
enshrined in repetition.
I would lie in the shade
as she reads the Rubaiyat
to me in a voice surprised
by winter's approach.
Polyglot
The Transylvanian girl
On the crepe stall in the Grassmarket
Is singing along to Rumania’s answer
To Madonna,
She speaks Italian as well as English
I am an Englishman in Auld Reekie
Ordering a French dish from a polyglot.
I tell her my daughter speaks French
and Ancient Greek
And once spoke Klingon,
She smiles and says
Ah! A linguist’s love.
Do you like Edinburgh? I ask
Aye, she says
A lilt of Scots
At the keen of her mouth,
Like chocolate sauce.
I eat my crepe
Feel truly international
Wish her Good Luck
As I get in my Korean car.
Language all around
Me like a storm, like love
In that song by
the wrong Presley…
Copyright © 2011, Kevin Cadwallender
Norton Conyers, Ripon
Two paths meet
at the ornamental pond
in front of the orangery.
A dragonfly basks on a lilypad.
Borders of irises and peonies
flank the garden path.
I walk to the mediaeval manor,
red-orange brick flushed
against azure sky.
Inside is the cupboard
graced with faces of the Apostles,
the secret staircase.
Is that Grace Poole hurrying?
a spluttering candle
in her hand?
The staircase leads
to a room under the eaves.
Charlotte’s tiny shoes
made impressions here -
the tale of the madwoman
confined to the attics
stayed in her memory.
There’s a chair in the corner.
I visit the fictitious past:
Grace binds Bertha to the chair
amid yells and convulsive plunges.
Jane leaves in silence
bound to her wedding dress,
white as a coral reef.
Rochester attends to his wife.
While Charlotte Brontë was governess to the Sidgwick family in 1839 she accompanied them here
to visit one of their relations. She may have heard the tale of a madwoman locked in the attics,
perhaps inspiring the plot of Jane Eyre. A few years ago a secret staircase was discovered here,
along with the cupboard that is mentioned in the novel.
Copyright © Edwin Stockdale, 2011
Summerland
Now is not your time, my dear,
Now is not your time.
Look at the petals but do not touch the flowers.
Leave them in the meadows, dear,
Leave them in the meadows.
The Summerland cannot have you now.
Do not look at the sun, my dear,
Do not look at the sun.
The brightness will blind your eyes,
Your pretty blue eyes.
Copyright © Sophie Marie Jones, 2011
The Butcher’s Daughter
Like insect wings across an ocean, we have struggled.
Struggled with the struggle of life’s mysteries and puzzles
Like lonely candles, incandescent, we are written on the page
Of act one - scene one, until the gruesome finale.
Like insect wings across an ocean we have struggled
There are things on country lanes that streetlights cannot see.
In cloak and daggers, in blood red night dress you have staggered
Through lonesome fields and caught the morning dew beneath your feet
That sweet specific bite that sends us tumbling through the world of
Light and sound and dollars and pounds towards that hillside cottage
And away from open ground.
Bursting through those doors, in sweat and blood red nightdress
You fell upon the bed in laughter, and foresaw the next chapter.
With pixel tears and broadband shivers you held my hand
Next to yours, and whispered
‘Like insect wings across an ocean we have struggled
Struggled with the struggle of life’s mysteries and puzzles
In anxious pins and needles, in fiscal worries we have cuddled.
In the green fields of the mind we will find the scissors that cut and slice the knot inside the chest
That prickly pest that chokes back those three words we like best.
We have heard the silence
The cold hollow hush of autumn nights disturbed by sunset engines
You have held me on the brink of self-significance and withdrew with rolling eyes
We have kneeled inside the church made of matchsticks and sprayed petrol-rhetoric towards the heavens
But
I am not the saint who walked on water
I am just the butcher’s daughter
Soaked in sweat and breadcrumb, in blood red nightdress I have floated like a feather
In love, forever.’
Copyright © Declan McKay, 2011
One Day, in Maryland
Peaceful and withdrawn, my Grandma’s sad eyes
contradict
her slight sweet smile,
except for one day each year,
when her eyes match her countenance.
Usually she is a pile in her recliner,
gazing out to see what birds have come to feed.
Occasionally she’ll stir to slurp a small sip of tea.
During my regular visits,
she indulges in telling a story,
sharing a magazine clipping,
or some trivial but treasured tidbit.
But that one day,
out of three hundred and sixty five,
she can remember
thistle laden hills of a land called home
and savour
authentic bridies,
meaty Shepherd’s pie,
and buttery shortbread.
Scots, full blood or two percent,
represent their clans proudly
wearing the colours of their history.
“The most colourful of tartans”—
the MacLean tartan
draped on my grandmother’s shoulders.
Babes and great grandparents in awe
of burly men in kilts throwing telephone poles.
Shetland sheep dogs herd unruly balls of fluff and fear.
Spinning swirling dancers,
with hair pulled taught into crisp buns,
prance over swords.
Eyes averted from the stage,
Grandma watches
little amateurs in the field, pretending
that they too can dance how the trained girls do.
Grandma swears that I can defy the odds.
That I could dance like that
even though my body isn’t “a Scot’s body.”
Copyright © Elizabeth Armstrong, 2011
A Resting Place
How else to say it, plaintive, plainer,
how else, tainted, duressed, obligatory;
and the nights, turning, thinking,
groggy after sleepless hours,
and less than safe from nameless absences
the dream-warped questioning revives.
Wind shivers in the autumn grasses
as Chinese poets hold forth in my mind;
days, days, sashaying in a recognizable diminuendo,
a music I was never fond of,
or food I never could abstain from.
Sunlight reflected throughout my wife's dried arrangement,
a clay jar's resting place;
the moon fills out
then slithers back to nothing.
And the sun lowers to the south,
while honking, flapping their wings, geese pass under contrails
further into the sky's deepening distance.
Copyright © Frank C. Praeger, 2011
a haiku and a tanka
paper boat
dances on waves
the child laughs
after a year’s gap
her letter
and expression of love
give me reason
to smile again
Copyright © Radhey Shiam, 2011
August 2011
Norman MacCaig
Lochan eyes take me all in
and other routes to the man
will never be my aspect.
The same smirking face,
cheekbones hard as raven beaks,
frog bags under fishing eyes,
and the same cigarette-toting fingers,
(the Glenmorangie is out of sight),
point from the base of his poems.
And this boulder of a book
will be my climb up Suilven,
many miles shy of Assynt.
Copyright © Neil Campbell, 2011
THE WALLS
- after Burns -
we think a mouse lives here
because we have seen what he has left behind,
dried up black memories, in piles, not distant
but close.
he could be in the wall
next to the boiler
warming himself on the pipes
as we sit here and fire up the heating
trying to fend off the cold coming
from thinly glazed windows, badly fitted,
in frames of cracked wood
rife with holes,
in old flats,
he is bedding down and glad,
amongst dust and his heirlooms:
patchworks of rags salvaged from floors
of families, collected through years.
and you wonder
if he pleads to us silently
in our poor winters.
Copyright © Graeme Smith 2011
Catching a glimpse
Of the world
Behind the door
Of the other bedroom
On the second floor
They listened to Verdi on the radio
As they assembled new furniture.
The smell of wood
Hung in the air, like
A sheet pegged
To a line
Blowing from the open skylight.
And two glasses of Sprite
Had been placed
On the smooth surface
Of a freshly made
Chest of drawers.
Sparkling, transparent,
Accompanying the clean lines
And simple shapes,
And unvarnished wood
In some kind of symmetry,
A unified symphony.
Each constituent part
Perfectly matched.
Copyright © Jane Hartshorn, 2011
FAITH IN NAME
Facing off
Against Helena
I see that I
Totally trust
Her inner warmth.
For I am bluff
And she is my mania
It shows how well I
Turn our loving talent
Half-way into myth.
Fairy tales and fluff
A latent, delicious amnesia
I need her body's warmth and then I
Take off her clothes and find I need it -
Her glorious, passionate clinch.
Copyright © 2011, Marcus Tristan Heathcock
(St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra Klassika)
The Corner Boys
The rocking horse boys are back,
standing at their corner,
ducking into the shadows to empower the darkness.
Waiting for the double klaxon on the ice-cream van.
Pirouetting on the spot as they pass the time,
grinding out pavement rings with their spiralling heels.
Bouncing off each other
like molecules in a heated flask,
Pausing sometimes to edge their cheap alloy combs
across the powder pink brickwork,
a slow ritual scratched out on their border wall.
Loitering in the mist of early Autumn
and cigarette smoke.
They are oblivious to the sharp-eyed,
world wise stare of the blackbird
lodged deep in the hedge tangle behind them
and from where an ultimate threat will surely come.
Copyright © 2011 Andy Thornton
July 2011
A poem to you
Do you remember
that film you made me sit through?
Well, I found it today
in the back of a cupboard,
in a dusty box.
I'm watching it once again,
with fresh eyes,
I thought you should know.
There was a certain point,
where you laughed,
and I cringed,
which I must admit,
has made me laugh along with you,
finally.
Even though you're probably watching a different film now.
In someone else's arms.
Probably with a new cat purring
contentedly, in your lap.
So, I'm watching this old film
again, the one which I hated with
such vitriol, but one which
I admit I now love.
They say it's better late,
than never,
but I beg to differ with them.
I just thought you'd like to know.
Copyright © Reg Davey, 2011
Of words and smoke
Afternoon in my parents' house.
The living room and we are
Talking of the Muirs, Edwin and Willa.
For me
It's the journey from the
Scotland of bone factories
And ledgers
To Prague and their conversation when they decided,
“The Trial then, and not The Process.”
More of an escape than a journey.
"Edwin Muir," my dad said.
"Always the return. That's
What you see in his poems."
And the words of my mum,
"Willa, an ostentatious smoker.
If you know what I mean."
And I did. I did.
And Edwin and Willa continue their chat
With Kafka's aunt.
Willa, cigarette resting between index and middle finger,
Wrist bent, palm up and
Elbow on hip,
Tips her hand back
And draws, heavily.
Copyright © Colin Fisher 2011
A Decade in the Life
Her mother keeps her letters still.
From college on a crested Hall
notepaper there is her calendar of
essays, dances and exams.
Then
the 70s. Postcards. Gwyn. They two
at festivals, on islands and on long
trekked holidays. Cards from the Isle
of Wight and Edinburgh, from Paris once,
and a plain postcard sketched by Gwyn
and sent from Mull, with drawings of
themselves, his mop of hair, her fringe.
And, in the midst of this, in ’76,
one photo. Glastonbury. A camp fire,
Gwyn’s great arm wrapping her round,
her head resting on his chest. Both
grinning.
From ’78, a headed notepaper
again, from ‘Roger Harbison, M.A.’,
(amended soon, on even creamier sheets,
to ‘Roger and Lisa Harbison’) …
but Mother re-reads Lisa’s decade
still, thinks often of the mop-head Gwyn,
the postcards, sketches, festivals,
the Glastonbury grins.
Copyright © Robert Nisbet, 2011
Provenance
At the ancestral home, blood
is Pictish. Before all this,
the slowest tectonic journey -
that brought us our memories in
the fragments of a shattered fjord -
ends in your lap.
The smell of Labrador and Greenland
harbours under the fingernails,
as constant as a gardener’s urge.
No agency can remove this scent.
The odour is already tattooed;
sewn into our fabric.
The sight is crystalline.
The dialect like broken straw.
The skin speaks and, as histories are disclosed,
we find out something
we didn’t know
we knew.
Copyright © John Irvine, 2011
TO WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
---William Wordsworth, Composed on Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802
[10 May] At the bottom of Haymarket I picked up a strong, jolly
young damsel and taking her under the arm I conducted her to
Westminster Bridge, and then in armour complete did I engage her
upon this noble edifice. The whim of doing it there with
the Thames rolling below us amused me much.
---Frederick A. Pottle, ed., Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763
Surely it was a Sunday when the solitary Englishman stopped
Mid-span, awed, breathless
Struck by a chance encounter with a sight so rare:
The Greatest City in the World for once still,
Pristine beyond Grasmere, beyond belief
And from this Romantic, in situ, sprang
A sonnet that forever fixed the sudden peace of mind which so
Ravished him that morning.
Thanks to Boswell’s Boswell we know
Four decades earlier in The Age of Reason
Just a week from his first tremulous meeting with
Dictionary Johnson Himself
A less fastidious, more pragmatic Scot, accompanied,
Likewise found inspiration there
In a sought encounter of a different sort
Making other use no doubt
Of the parapet, propping not his notebook
But straddled, wobbly-kneed flesh, until he, at last,
Gained brief transport, solaced his existence.
May bridges ever get us where we want to go.
Copyright © John Pinschmidt, 2011
June 2011
Witness
All night we saw the flares and heard
each detonation seconds afterward (we were
ten miles away), and each was like a ricochet
inside our heads. There was
a silence after two o’clock; we tried to sleep;
then it began again. People are dying, we said,
but there was little substance in the words except
an imageless horror; nothing in the mind’s eye
but fire. It carried on till almost dawn.
At eight we tried to phone Elizabeth, then Andrew;
no reply; at least it rang. We thought of Tom and Janet,
right in the centre, just between George Square
and the Strathclyde campus, but were afraid to try.
That day, and in the sad and angry days that followed,
we watched the pictures; wept as if this were the first
deep wounding of a city in the history of the world.
At first the fires and the rescue squads, the people
found alive; and then the smouldering wastelands.
In Partick, Kingston, Gorbals, Garnethill,
Cowcaddens, Whiteinch, and the MerchantCity,
hills of broken masonry, summits and valleys,
ranges of scree-slopes, sand-dunes; a blackened
piece of something sticking out, as if a spade
had been set upright in earth by the devil’s
gardener. A severed block of flats,
a stack of open rooms, a chair, a sofa;
a woman on the third floor, rummaging.
In spray paint on a wall: WHERE ARE YOU
ALISON? I’M AT UNCLE PETER’S. A big
heart-symbol underneath. And then, a round
of fearful snapshots: stump of the Cathedral spire,
the torn facade of the City Chambers; the corpse
of the Mitchell Library, ‘Europe’s biggest
reference library’, we used to boast to visitors.
Two of its granite blocks had rolled, almost intact,
into North Street; all the rest but for a fragment
of the south facade, was rubble. I don’t
remember how I got there, but I stood in tears
on the margin of that desert; they were stacking
some surviving books. Atinder, a librarian who knows me,
came carefully over, said some words I scarcely heard,
then held a book for me to see, and said, ‘But look!
Here’s one they didn’t kill’.This
was our city, where we sat in cafes, where we studied,
where we often stopped to look again at the storeys
above the shops, the well-proportioned windows,
laurels, pediments and columns; where we walked
an hour or two among the trees in Kelvingrove,
loving each other and the place. Presently,
attracted or distracted by some sound or shadow,
I awoke. It was imaginary, it was as if
a dream, or daymare. You had not dreamed it, but soon
you caught my grief – and my implacable certainty,
a conviction that would not submit
to common sense or reason: that it was
an augury, a simulacrum of another time
or another homely place where you and I,
or our children’s children, or the unborn
children of strangers, will tremble
at the loud profanities of war. Touch, this
mystery is granite. Ash has settled on it.
Copyright © James Graham 2011
February - May 2011
Kildan Fragments
(To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the evacuation of the island community of St. Kilda, on 29th August 1930).
1.
I will not fall
Though my frame be on fire
The same sun
Strikes Mary McQueen
She sits with her father and brother
Blazing feet on young gannets
For her and her only
I will risk the mistress stone
We will swear together my Mary and I
Crucifix and people will witness
2.
Like most my first choice is fulmar flesh
But mackerel shoals are passing
I sit with my kin for the Mod
As every morning except Sunday in the Street
Mod or St. Kilda parliament
It makes no odds
Fish or fowl we have to decide
Last week we re-allocated the strips
3.
I lament for my brother
I lament for us all
Shout Stac an Armin
Tell the fowlers that Col has gone over
We bake bread and kill the sheep already
Lament as we walk the
Sun's shadowto
Gill-Criosed in the afternoon
There are no corners to hide in
Christ's Sepulchre takes us all
Lament as we eat bread and mutton around the grave
Lament for seven days
But remember always the man who loved us in fowling
Remember he was our strong hands and feet
Remember Coll who has gone over
4.
I share the Michelmas cake
As I shared the Brendan Feast
And ride a horse on Hirta
Galloping before the Sluagh
For all our sakes I share
The Spirit Host can pick you up
The Spirit Host can let you fall
For friendship with our brother Archangel
This cake is a token
5.
Sleep a night on Conachair
Awake a poet encompassed
Make music with wind and sea birds
Our song remnant is decried
Only Euphemia MacCrimmon
Cares to remember
Her old-age stick
Thrust into sand
Rapt stones recall the
Dance of the fulmar share-out
6.
When sun divides glen
Ishould fear no evil
But whowill walk for us
The long afternoon shadow
From death house to grave circle?
If need be crossing the strips
Who tramples the last crop?
Mary Gillies went over in June
This August day St. Kilda dies
We have killed the dogs
Yesterday Dunara shipped our beasts
Exodus remnant waits to board Harebell
Leaving bibles and corn
Notes:
Mistress stone - a large rock where young men who wished to marry were challenged to balance to prove their worthiness.
Mod - Where the men met in the Street to discuss the day’s activities.
Stac an Armin - Pinnacle on St Kilda.
Gill-Croised - a ceremonial place for burials.
Hirta - An island in the St Kilda group.
Conachair - mountain on St. Kilda.
Dunara and Harebell - ships involved in the evacuation
Copyright © William Martin 2011
The two:fourteen
Our eardrums are pig skin, hammer and tongs, all
this back-chat from the bottom of an oil-filled cave.
For our money, you said
and then posted him off
with gaffer tape twisted all round his ears:
a sandwich in his pocket should he think
of looking down without an SAE
(without a by-your-leave).
You waved from the track: from the running out lines
of breaking down patterns, of thick rubber sticks.
For our freedom, you said
laughing so hard that both your sides split
and your obliques grinned.
Copyright © Jen Campbell 2011
Northabout
Smashing the crust on the roof of the world
Such steely resolve from true men of iron
Nudging and herding small ‘bergs off the bow.
Northwest and Northeast after Antartic trip
Pack-ice sent cracking by double ribbed hull
Halyards deep frozen and a cockpit of snow.
That slow crystal spire transits the moon
Readying the spare rib on a jetty of ice
Moored fore and aft to a floe that won’t flow.
See polar bears dance to a sunset violin
The’re plotting positions in this weeks lagoon
Then recounting conditions at fifty below.
Cooking a stew in a mammoth of white
Wisely paying heed when nature calls time
This is the north this is the ice.
Copyright © Seamus Harrington 2011
Driftwood
Look at me!! Driftwood,
No fixed abode,
Once an integral part of deciduous life,
swaying softly in shimmering rays of sunshine,
In a merciless cut!! a hack, gone.
Torn, limb from limb,
bark stripped,
hung, drawn and quartered ,
discarded, diminished,
slipping perilously to inevitable ruin,
to the burn.
Seasonal floods,
a chance of escape,
but no map or trail to follow,
uninvited I meander the rivers course,
a refugee to the awaiting delta tide.
Agitated, tossed and bruised in salt spraying storms,
daily they cleanse my palate,
A thousand suns, moons, they rise and fall,
bleaching me, this cast away
under a billion stars,
I come to rest upon a shore,
smooth rolling rocks clutch they me from the departing ebb tide,
each wave, a chance of return for wandering sailors,
to Davy Jones’s locker.
Will this one do, oh this is a good one!!
a chat up line, A final pick up,
not better for wear, smooth silver and grey,
hardened, inveterate but not criminalised,
curiously I await my fate.
A thousand suns, moons, they rise and fall
bleaching me, under a billion stars,
In a window sill, now safe from the world,
At night!
I rest below the warm comfort of a table lamp.
Look at me!! Driftwood
Copyright © George Ross 2011
Scatter my ashes, here in the highlands
Driving through Strontian,
I realised
"Scatter my ashes here
in the highlands"
the home of my soul
when the body gives way
with gaga and papa
fertile at foot
soil and sand
skim on through mountains
down rivers
past deer
beyond the horizon
we belong
"Scatter my ashes here
in the highlands"
Copyright © Arun Sood 2011
(Aberdeen)
Connective Tissue
We still need harbingers. If we forget the time
or skip a day we are disorientated. If you can't
find someone they're arriving at the nearest fleshpot.
Or waterfall. Or mosque. I read in subways,
bodies enervate with persistent zeal. If I could last
the deliberations I would invent, my prototypes
thrown onto viaducts. Each valve in the heart
is an emaciation risk. Keep an eye on the train
just leaving Swansea; the track is littered
with timber and machinery which didn't tally.
If you line it up there is a lot we fear.
Only blistered feet have walked it. It is more
straightforward to stay, know the date and suffer,
than drive mapless and breathe the extra pressure.
Copyright © Carl Griffin 2011
The Tree
The tree you gave me is a living metaphor.
It eases styled green into the summer.
In winter it stands firm but wants something better.
And if birds land they land a moment only,
dark and fickle-shifting like a shadow
over branches so unmoving that it can
only be a thought that has landed.
And if leaves fall they fall in order and in silence,
leap from the window-ledges of a Monday
only to be cradled in forgiving air,
rocked and hush-a-byed along and down the light.
And if the whole thing grows we only notice
on the wards, in the churchyards, when the clocks go back.
How high it has grown now, higher than the open
bedroom window with the fussing curtains!
How deep it must be rooting, further every summer,
further where the earth is warmer, darker, harder.
Copyright © William Hughes 2011
Guardian Angel
Ghostly, these
Unearthly creatures
Always with us, unspeaking
Right by your side
Devoted
Intent on keeping
A watchful eye
Not many see them
At rest or play
Not many know they are there, today
Go on look up, look around you
Everyone has an angel who
Loves your dearly and watches for you
So, now be at peace and rest a while.
Copyright © Mary S McLuskey 2011
The River
By day the ghosts rise gaunt
out of the now clear flowing river
hulls huddled
shrouded in mist and memories
of men who worked the yards
with hammers, sending cascades of fire
and sounds of rivets hammered home
into the pall of sulphur smoke
that hung above the city
By night the phantoms fade
and disappear into the
liquid dark of bridges
arch shadowed,
necklaced with amber lights
Tinsel ships moored, sluggish
hammering the air with sounds
of Reggae, rock and rhythm
tied to the bank of city life
going nowhere down an empty river
Copyright © Jean MacDonald 2011
Jimmy Daws luvs Mary Knox..True.
Mary Knox was slim and swarthy and had the look of a gypsy about her.
She had long black hair and a figure that exposed as much as the law
and Big Ray in the Marlow Bar would allow.
Wearing tight hot pants and shiny knee length boots
she was every bit as alluring as the nubile models
that adorn the minds of men.
Big Ray was unsure if she was, or if she was not
making money out of the passing trade.
Every time she moved Big Ray’s wife seethed
and prayed to the Goddess of all plain women
for the comeuppance of sweet Mary Knox.
Jimmy Daws loved Mary though his love was unrequited.
“I don’t like you Jimmy Daws.” She shouted,
throwing down the front door key.
Fresh paint wafted out onto the landing
as Jimmy walked in, his long hair flowing
a couple of cans of continental lager
stuffed deep within his reefer jacket.
In a tattered vest and skimpy pants
Mary posed on top of a ladder, painting the ceiling
“If you’re going to give me a hand Jimmy Daws?” she teased.
“You best get that gear off .”
Within minutes Jimmy was up the ladder in his underpants
and Mary was in the kitchen, her clothes back on,
cleaning up, and wondering how come it had taken so long.
Copyright © J.M.Brown 2011
Two Old Fools and Bottle (or Three) of Fine French Wine.
I started reminiscing with a friend of mine I’ve known for years.
We began to grasp a glimpse of life in form,
The sight though, was tainted with the opening of wine,
The wine sank and with it went the daylight, headed for Lethe.
The sinking of the daylight however, wasn’t the sinking of the wine
And we talked and laughed and each time until we cried.
We said to ourselves, to each other, fervently, that if we could just go back
Back and back, with what we know now, if that could happen,
My, what a time we’d have.
My friend quickly surmised, looking at the sky, “boy what a time we had”.
Once on the hill of Montmartre we watched the old year lanterns rise,
The crowds watched them float up from their bed of buzz and crudely served drinks,
They hung and rose and shimmied in the breeze, dodging the invisible rush hour pedestrians,
They hung again, hanging. Not rising, not falling, not drifting nor swerving.
The crowd were falling under its spell and growing quieter and quieter, wilting.
Came the knife that cut the string, a call went up DIX!
And the lanterns full of fire took their cue and flew.
The party raged into the cold cold hours and late I heard a lady remark,
“That was a great experience and next year it will be even better”.
I thought in the hub bub, ‘time is not a place mad’moiselle’.
Copyright © Bryan O’Carroll 2011
A Robin flies into Tesco's in Galasheils
in, un-noticed, nervous,
unseen by the crowd
it's proud red, dulled
as it flits along the aisle
confused, bemused
by the un-natural warmth
and light.
two days before Christmas,
a promotion inspired?
or just a wrong turn?
I can't say, and can't stay
to see how it ends.
Copyright © Alan Fernie 2011
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