PASSING LOOP

Passing Loop 

If someone tells me one more secret
I will sink. They are all bad.
The one he kissed. The one he lost. The accusations.
The train flies through the unlit stations.
Were we meant to travel or
Become a tree, heavy with fruit,
Not shrivelled truth, to whisper night
Companionably, with moon-breathed leaf
Beside the platform, drip with light?

Alison Brackenbury

poetry

Cum Laudeus C

I must go up to the C again
To the C and its curve so high.
To the sweep of its cite
And the bent of its height
As it points twice to the words' far lie.

I must go down to the C again
And its soft contoured cry;
Its implored can and could,
To be followed upward, if wooed
Till it crests in a canticled sky.

I must journey forth to the C again,
To its comely, capacious abode
On its wind-swept cape,
Its caprioled fate
A comma, in a cavalier spate.

I must seek out the C again
To drink its near-chronicled fill.
A courtesaned life,
Incomplete but rife,
Open-ended, yet curving toward nil.

Larry Lefkowitz

poetry

Cum Laudeus C

I must go up to the C again
To the C and its curve so high.
To the sweep of its cite
And the bent of its height
As it points twice to the words' far lie.

I must go down to the C again
And its soft contoured cry;
Its implored can and could,
To be followed upward, if wooed
Till it crests in a canticled sky.

I must journey forth to the C again,
To its comely, capacious abode
On its wind-swept cape,
Its caprioled fate
A comma, in a cavalier spate.

I must seek out the C again
To drink its near-chronicled fill.
A courtesaned life,
Incomplete but rife,
Open-ended, yet curving toward nil.

Larry Lefkowitz

BOGUS

The Central London college, i.e. bogus principal, bogus lecturers, has lost government right to recruit. Therefore, my services have been dispensed with and I search for another. The college was improving slightly but I find it difficult to work in such places. I certainly find it difficult to take orders from people I know to be bogus and both the people in management positions in health and social care were bogus. Very frustrating!

living by the sword

Living by the Sword

He had a look of the illicitly serpentine about him

could summon a home like Caligula in Rome,

as he lifted his foot the ground would rise to meet it

and so forth.  Of course,

the pendulum must swing

and the old tree will bear the most rings,

an abstract print

shapes and squares of solid hues

gained ill repute, grey city workers and mud stuck views.

If I had dared to ask,

where he had been, where he was and where he started from

and algebraic conundrum of x to z

a man of education might meet the end

or the beginning.  But not he,

destined to be the alien stray

he’ll always leave but somehow stay

pollen carried on the wind to foreign shores

and many more, a thread through the ages to keep in tune.

Gemma Wildman, Chesham, Bucks

volcano

The drowning man is lost beneath the waves,
the birds picking at his feet
and in the distance
pixelated in greens, yellows and reds
the forbidding slope of
the dormant volcano.

ying cao

Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants

Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants

Yangshuo’s mountains protrude

into starless dark

tenebrous tongues

lick the lake

raindrops printing wrinkles

on its leaden skin.

A silhouette poles a bamboo boat

dipping a brush in ink.

Beside the fisherman

seven cormorants in a line

corded necks bent like hoses

wings in dry-brush black

stretched wide

chalky backs

speckled with charcoal.

Pen-nib heads glide

slip into ebony silk

streak apart like water

on a speeding windscreen.

Moments later

each bird surfaces

in a shower of grey pearls

silver fish aslant its beak

eyes glinting like jet

before shadowing down once more.

The old man’s pole collects them

time and again

he grasps each sheened throat

to shimmer its catch into his basket.

At some unseen signal

fishers return to their perch

shake drowned feathers

over the lake mirror

utter harsh cries at the night

until they are fed.

Margaret Eddershaw, Nafplion, Greece

lessons of the war

Lessons of the War:
Going to Vote

Today we are going to vote. Yesterday,
We had party political broadcasts. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have a new government. But today,
Today we are going to vote. Cherry blossom
Blushes pink with modest triumph in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we are going to vote.

This is an election leaflet. And this
Is the voting card whose use you will see,
When you go to vote. And this is proportional representation,
Which in your case you have not got. The local branches
Wear their rosettes with silent, eloquent gestures
Which in our case we have not got.

These are the leaked reports, which are always released
In the run up to an election. And please do not let me
See anyone not reading all the press reports. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength of will. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them not reading it all.

And this you can see is the spin doctor’s smile. The purpose of this
Is to close the breach, as you see. He can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Winning the votes. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The candidates are harassing and wooing the electorate.
They call it winning the votes.

They call it winning the votes: it is perfectly easy
To resist if you have any strength of will; like the spin doctor’s smile,
And the rosettes and the leaflets and the proportional representation,
Which in our case we have not got; and cherry blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today, we are going to vote.

Eleanor Livingstone

the other end of the day

snakeskin.poetry site

The Other End Of The Day

At the other end of the day
When the sun folds in
And the moon, pale-faced,
Startles a sky bible black
But not starless, I look
Through these windows
Seeing nothing but desire.

Take your finger to my lips -
I will not be disturbed;
Take your mouth to mine -
I will not be disturbed,
Having walked the land
Of the unloved far too long.

And having walked the land
Of the unloved I know
The difference between
The seen and the unseen,
That familiarity of a smile
That has me wanting
Yet gone now as the moon
Disturbs nothing but air

And I, looking through these
Windows see nothing but desire
Undone and restless whilst
Morning happens and I find
Myself disturbed by sudden truths
Like black amnesias of heaven.

Even unseen you are beautiful.

John Cornwall

STORM

The storm soared clashing with the cloud,
breaking upon the earth
destroying towns.

Ying Cao

St Pats

At present I am teaching two classes at St Patricks. One is brilliant, listening to me and doing well. The other, mainly ignaorant, rude and arrogant-not listening to me and probably will fail. Just not very bright or not bright (intelligent) enough.

middlebrow

Eleanor Stewart-Middlebrow.mag

The Grave

My mother lies in the hillside beneath the long grass

Undiscovered, with no mark of the match lit past

Only known by the sheep with the iron-dark eyes

Moving over rough heather and mounds in their tribes.

When she died

No one watched

But the low, ticking clock.

And we all left her bones on the hills

When she died

We walked down to the car park and none of us cried.

How I wish I could rumble with the bracken-burnt sheep

Over scarred earth lain raw like old wounds and old meat

Away from the grave that lies in the heath

To the higher hills where the wind-worn find peace

But mama is always under my feet.

Walkin With the Dead

The stories in Wattpad tend to be derivative, but not of other books or other writing, but of TV programmes or films.

For example: Walking With the Dead, the various Vampire films. The narrative is already supplied. In Zombie ones it always involves a journey/and/or/a siege. Vampire ones are about love or lust, where in both cases the monsters represent diseases or the 'other', the alien or foreigner.

The writing is often in short paragraphs and are concerned, like films, with action.

wattpad

Although there are any number of reviews for printed books, there are few if any for internet published works. I intend to produce critiques of these whenever I can.


A good example of an internet publisher is Wattpad, where, unlike a number of present and earlier examples, good work is routinely published, producing a distinctive and often successful method and style of writing. Wattpad usually contains imitations of successful TV or film productions, which elicit high levels of readership, but also, on occasion, original work.

The Rich

Lacking humility, the rich
believe their temporary dominance
is everything.
The poor, without power or influence,
their lives dwindling to insignificance,
look upon them and wonder:
'Are they wrong?'

Yin Cao

teaching

I have great hopes for the present intake but unfortunately in one class there are still a small number of rough, pointless types whose ignorance is matched only by their egos.