Grave: Walking In
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
Untitled
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
Eimear's Holiday
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
Mind
Games
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 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
