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poetry
“
Here is a selection with a wide variety of themes and forms, ranging from sonnets to prose, and from the everyday life to the causes of our days.
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DIARY OF A PLASTIC SOLDIER
-1She’s caked in desert mud and dust but smiles - polite, despite the drying tears. She’s wearing the shirt her father wore in the last war - in her pocket the outline of his Bible. Her hair is dry but fair; a little like the weather.
(EXTRACTS) by Pip Thornton
A chain gang unravels, stooping under foreign blades and the shackled safety of surrender. With staring-blind eyes they stumble and weave through the haze, while the sunburnt soldier pushes and shoves, and shouts at ears already full of conflict. This desert is empty with smoke. Marlboro, Bensons or No 1s. - take your pick. All dependent, of course, on the source - the Battery clerk with less clerking here to be done, in mud-dust heaven, than sitting, scratching, attaching paper clips to slips of paper, later to be dancing drunk among the gathered dregs of a Rhineland sweat-pot. In the festering dusk between fever and chill, where fear and boredom breed like stagnating infection, and drunken flies stick to the thick stinking wool which wraps around the clammy poisonous plastic bottle of what, when translated from the Arabic, passes as water; we drink, and we live. -2It’s just a wild dog dying - louder than my heart - that scream which chills the humid darkness of this dread night . This night steals my privileged sight, its spies deny me balance and vision and rest, and fail to warn me - for now this Silent Night is wracked with blasts from God’s own arsenal, erupting into colours sharp as knives. Sometimes the thunder is louder than the guns, someone said, in the deafening dark-light, while the airwaves whispered - someone’s dead. No place to cry in this night of confusion and I try to ignore it - eyes tight like a child, clenched and coiled - and drenched with cold aching sweat, and the relief which comes with dawn. Through the haze and the blinding cacophony, they run at me, baying silently. With eyes
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POETRY clenched and fingers expectant, I convulse at their every charge. -3Strike a pose, Tommy, strike a pose atop your truck, with its defaced desert rats and Rangers in the windscreen dust. Show Glasgow how it’s done - their son will do them proud and prove his worth in this - this tactless task - this faceless farce we played in. A promise - a pact, a friend for life (for now), it seems, at least. With bare-bone candour and the fresh-faced thrill of a first-blood war, he took his shots from over my shoulder. -4We went to war pro patria mori, 45 minutes of death or glory, same Old Lie - new front page story. Sent to war on a whim and a prayer, we went to war and we’re still there. She lived for a while in a world where the ground would shift with the wind, with no pillow, no bed, and no walls, to either smother or shield her, cover or keep her. Neither safe nor suffocated, she lived on a plateau in between, and dreamed of tomorrow. She lives now framed by bricks which the wind can’t shift, in a parallel paralysis of pity and of pride, faint praise and whispers tainting duty with doubt. They never read the book she wrote in her world without walls. Dance with me, it said, or damn me - don’t condemn me with a smile.
A BANKING SONNET by Luan-Don Dang
In fetters they put us but we’re to blame With their voodoo numbers we let them be We gave them the dice and rules to the game Trusting their claim to just hold tight and see With our reigns in their paws they pulled on hard While left and right fought old wars unaware They gamble our homes; our tax and back yard And yet like cows and sheep we stand and stare We elected cowards who sold us cheap Pointless partisan ruled their rhetoric In our name they robbed us but now we weep? Where were their policies economic? Rewarding failure with bonuses more Once more indifferent; once more we ignore
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POETRY
SMITHFIELD by Pip Thornton
Through swinging dead - we dodge, and trade our frosted breath for laughter – rounding corners, dripping red on white, and scrubbed like never desecrated stone – our ears pumping, running North, then East – then slowing, fast colliding in our carcass dance with blood-spat boots on gut-lined roads and down Snow Hill to Farringdon.
‘I HAVE HEARD OF YOUR PAINTINGS, TOO’ The white wine suits her pallor, she does not seem To hold it, just to have snagged it On her fingers. She stands like a handstand Stands, upheld with vacancy, a dustsheet. She is rotting, every night I see her, here among The comfortable men. Men like her father, Who brings her here as an epaulette, a bayonet On an electric rifle, her decoration decomposes. The rotting I see is static; here face is stuck on a movement between disinterest and grace, stuck like a teacher Caught her at it. The rot’s not something describable, Nor is it as simple as her untouched self: I’ve seen unfucked women before. She knows the wrapping of her clothes covers neither Flesh nor beauty, and hovering at her father’s shoulder It’s nothing to do with a daughter’s duty. She is here Where men are too old to live and she much too young To understand her role. Her grip upon The bar I work behind has turned her fingers white. And as My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen turn to descend the stairs She sways atop her heels and screams within her eyes.
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by Patrick Davidson
POETRY
“CHUGGER” ( I WISH YOU WERE IN MY SHOES) by Felix Franck Girl’s spent all afternoon canvassing on the Strand, green logo-shirt and fur puff of a faux hat & mittens. Smiles, millions of them, thrust at you, you, you so many smiles they pile up on the pavement, the old ones gone all soggy beneath the new. Girl’s spent all afternoon (sun’s gone) trying to canvass, but the passers don’t buy whatever it is she must, must sell. Back two hours later and she’s swimming in discarded smiles; I’m not sure a single pair of feet has really looked her way. Why is it allowed on earth that such smiles, every last parcelled and articulated one, should be refused? She turns around. Oh. Green-logo-shirt-puff-smile girl has a lazy eyelid, like a wounded teddy bear. Recognise it when you see it: this is a small tragedy. And yet, for all this (not a single one, no not a single one of us has even, not even you reading not even me writing even pretended to care), more smiles? Not unlike a wounded teddy bear, girl has a stitched mouth that can’t frown at the people who don’t stop for her. I write where she can’t weep.
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POETRY
ROOD DREAMING
It is a long time since, but I will recall being ripped from the forest’s fringe for tearing my roots from terra firma lacerated my larynx.
MODERN VERSE TRANSLATION
Formidable fiends manhandled me and showed me as some spectacle ordering me to raise wrongdoers. My enemies orchestrated this often – men bearing me on their backs until placing me at a peak. Once I witnessed the Maker of Mankind hurtling with great honour wishing to mount me; when he did I dared not burst my branches, nor bend against the Lord’s word. The earth shook suddenly, and I could have fallen and felled his foes, but I stood stiff. Then the brave buck stripped himself, was strong and stern of conscience, the Lord Almighty. So, he clambered up my timber frame right to the top and rose in esteem in the eyes of everyone – this was his attempt at absolution for all. I shivered when he first tenderly entwined with me. Yet I stopped myself from sinking to the ground, from falling and folding my leaves to the floor, and I stood strong. They raised me as a rood-tree, raised me for the Mighty Maker, the Lord of Life Everlasting, I felt beckoned not to bend. Dark nails were driven through me, I am left with visible vicious wounds and scars, but I hastened away from hurting them. They befouled us both together. So I was left drenched with blood bled from his side as his spirit soared. I persisted despite many horrible happenings on that hill. I saw the Saviour callously spread-eagled. Black clouds converged and cloaked his body, its burning brilliance. The dark shadow spilled out and shrouded all humanity who wept for the Creation King. Christ was crucified. Still pious people came on pilgrimage to pay homage to the Heaven Maker. I saw it all. I was painfully pierced with sores, so I bent
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by Alexander Athienitis
POETRY to human hands with humility and honour. The tormentors clutched Christ there, the Lord Almighty, and heaved him down from that heavy harm. The soldiers left me spattered with sweat and blood and tears, I was all shot-through with spikes. He, the limb-weary one, was laid down by them, and they took their place at the top by his head. They looked at the Lord for he rested there a long while tired out from his time with me the cursed cross.
I see the grass grows heavy With the ghosts of feet long gone, And slivers of sleet settle Into the steps, claiming them as their own.
THE PLAYGROUND OAK’S WINTER RHYME by Abhilaksh Lalwani
Sigh, the wind blows down And litters the land with leaves, A winter bed of dead fall For wandering souls and thieves.
Ah the nights glow lush With sturdy secondhand snows, Swings and see-saws lie silent As children cry and the night bird crows.
My arms grow too weak To bear the burden of the skies, My sight the wind withers And floods with a night full of lies:
Ah what have you done To the sprightly midsummer breeze, To laughing slides of sunlight To chasing smiles and calloused knees?
Oh I see feet and feathers As the plunging pigeons pass by The seeded hearts of children, The benched hearts of those to die.
Oh Winter, you cold-heart, You scheming scion of sunless things! Give me back my youthful sheen, Return the crying their smiles and swings!
There is singular laughter That breaks me from my reverie, But it’s only the poltergeist wind Playing prank on some pensive beech tree.
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POETRY
THE DREAM by Mary Alcaro Last night I dreamt of you; not as you were, not as we were, but as my subconscious mind somehow imagines that we are now, with the barriers of distance and silence removed. Our lives were as they are; I, the woman I am now, and not the girl I was when you once knew me, and you, the same as ever: a girl’s name associated with, but never attached to, you. At first, I was taken aback at your presence: no, not at your presence, but at your demeanor. Your eyes glimmered and your lips gently pulled into a sheepish smile. This was the man I fell in love with, not the one I loved. And you in your joy prattled on about the girl who filled my vacancy, her sweet schoolgirl freckles, her fiery red hair, and a mind worthy of your own. And I looked on wistfully as you described your own fumbled attempts to take her by the hand; for, in order for one to be flustered, one must feel, and in order to feel, another must elicit some feeling. Yet when your blue eyes met mine, I could not but smile, and run to embrace you; and holding me in your strong arms, you spoke of your newfound contentedness. My heart spilled over with love. ********************** The arms in which I awoke did not belong to you; rather, they belonged to a man who had perceived some silent emotion in the shift of my exhalations, and had pulled me into his arms. Darkness provided the cloak she is so famous for offering secret-laden lovers, preventing my tearful gaze from meeting his innocent one. Upon waking, I discovered that what had so hurt me about your nightly visit of my subconscious. It was not your presence, your anachronistic past haunting my contented present; it was not your praise of the girl who had come to replace me, or the beauty you found in her eyes. It was not even the fact that she had succeeded in bringing you happiness where I could not. What hurt me most was that I had forgotten the true color of your eyes.
“Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality, And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts…” –Lord Byron, “The Dream”
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