The deadened leaves are scattered on cars
like confetti; the wedding of one
season to another. A diurnal winged-thing
can't sleep for the rest, the erratic patterns
knitting a pearled gate so I might enter into it.
This church fate is a patch of green
pasture, which people lie down on
when it gets warmer;
and epitaphs, severed like semi-skimmed stones
through the rain which wets our eyes.
The dark tunnel
of enmeshed, outstretched boughs is
the lattice work over the pie in the sky.
My next foot falls into the grey matter,
mulched on the floor, a crow calmly bawls,
and the sky becomes a little less white.
All my screens flicker as I try to find a channel.
The fluid in the gutter is suspect
in its clarity. Seeping
between the lines.
A squirrel pulses along next to me,
up and down the inverse Vs
of the stones which keep a lid on things
which fall apart and form an ECG:
it flatlines along a fallen tree
and everything reminds me of life.
So they glisten gravely to the weeping willow
which hangs, harassed, in a patch of fake light.
Some glisten glamorously, as the stone-cold angels
brazenly conceal
The angelic face
and monochrome place
we all lie.
Caleb Parkin
In sight, perspective on prospect.
No reception awaits the loveless pleasure.
Incite, now might she learn the measure.
Never Will.
Always might:
People mourn the night’s delight.
David Shepperd & Bryony Ryan
11
Eimear-
Such demeanour:
Weary sighs
And reddened eyes
And piteous cries,
All the basest of lies,
And suddenly-severed ties,
The sharp puncture of swollen pride
(Self-indulgence’s most difficult child),
The echoing clang when egos collide-
These were the pains that most characterised
Her year.
It involved trolls,
But I’ll get to those
In time;
Be patient, reader of mine,
I’ll get to the trolls in time.
Chris Murray
An impending thought, dreamt of endless times before
Finally surpassed me-
Knowledge of the Sphere is vital, buried wit will not reward,
Or at least, not literally,
Foolish to doubt that Earth will not slant at the closing of my eye
Galaxies will not converge amongst the echoes of my tacit cry
And ethereal asteroids will not collide against me—for—
The Universe is a Toy- And, I,
The silent child, who plays within his pen
Concocting the most conceited of plans
To make this Precious Plaything mine—
James Davies
The Terrors
The fat slap of the bullet
Invading the brain of the man next to me.
Everything stops.
It’s cold tonight.
The soft snow floats aimlessly down,
Glinting in the wan streetlamp,
Coating all our sins with numbing ease.
Stalingrad has never looked so beautiful.
Except that man’s blood has seeped into the road.
And the smell of gunpowder,
The smell of Gun Power.
I stand here naked
In the year of our Lord, 1954,
About to be shot by drunk conscripts.
Yet I don’t hate them,
Or the monstrous machine that made
So much misery and despair.
I mourn the loss of the dream,
Mine and Theirs,
I mourn the time when the snow melts,
Leaving tell-tale rusty splash marks on the tarmac,
I mourn the immemorial hatred of life
That will drive us all to destruction.
I mourn for you.
Another fat slap.
RJ Rulach
Real Hearts: The Day After Friday the 13th
It's not that
A god heart these days is hard to find,
bcause they're everywhere: swollen,
over-inflated and hovering spectrally,
as hard as love hearts
and as ready to crumble.
Chemically-enhanced, e-numbered, yet
lacking the lustre they
have been entranced
to feel forever.
Fluff.
They are not symmetrical,
they stray to the left and
cannot be cut-out
and glued to others:
Real hearts are often tied
to a brain and often
connected with veins, vanities, whatever,
to a liver and unmentionables
(bits we best forget)
Real hearts are red,
and often green in other senses,
lackijng in oxygen, stifled.
Maybe black, incinerated by
their own self-image.
And real hearts pulse, switch,
on and off. They swell and shrink
as unquestionably as the
trudging of shopping feet,
the unique dots and dashes
maydayed on every receipt.
Caleb Parkin