​I passed baby shops
Sweet girl in pink,
The dresses stared back
They’re mocking it seems,
No daughter to love
No dresses in pink,
No loving talk
Am I on the brink?
 
Longing to comb
Her hair while we speak,
We could be good friends
Would she look like me?
 
Questions of she
Sweet girl in pink,
Filling that dress
So pretty in pink.
I picture her smile
Imagine her hair
A friend she can be
My mini me.
 
 

​We are different of race
But not of heart,
Our sense of humor
Colleagues, then friends.
They won’t approve
My mind screams this out,
Dating and drinks
We conversate,
The night is young
I have my place,
Is it for grabs?
It’s getting late.
He’s in pursuit
I hesitate,
Until we are one
And it’s really late,
Facing the night
Back home I went,
Holding him back
Never again.
Futile it feels,
Having our fun
Was it for love?
I just found me.
 
 

​The kitchen roars
The oven is on,
Hearing the scream
As she struggles to think.
Screaming; he runs,
Excitement so long
The tablet is on
Her phone dwindles down.
Watching the cats
They play, and they roam,
The outdoors that lure
Inviting breeze.
Exhaustion sets in
Perhaps she should leave,
The child and their cats,
And she dares to dream.
With changes of leaves
The green that just fades,
No diapers left
The cupboards are bare.
It’s hardly rare
But she clings to dreams,
For when the child screams
To make her feel mean.
 

John (“Jake” ) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries - Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada,  Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia,  St Vincent, Spain and Thailand. and traveled to 45 countries during his career.  Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed two novels, (Giant Nazi Spiders, and the Great Divorce) and is pursuing publication.  He has been writing poetry all his life and has published his poetry in electronic poetry forums, including All Poetry, Moon Café and Duane’s Poetree. (under the name Jake Lee).  He is looking forward to transitioning to his third career – full-time novelist and poet after completing his second career as a Foreign Service officer, and his first career as an educator overseas for six years upon completion of his Peace Corps service in South Korea.
​

​Every day
There is another outrageous statement
From this preacher or that preacher
 
Saying that God spoke to them
And told them that Trump
 
Was anointed by God himself
And would bring us all to the promised land
 
Well I hate to bring it up
But felt that I must
 
If God exists                                     
And is all powerful
 
Why would he waste his time
Talking to these idiot preachers?
 
And why would he anoint Trump
The most ungodly of all politicians?
 
How do these preachers know
It is God calling?
 
How did God talk to them?
On the phone? By email? By tweet
Or by visions or voices in their head?
 
Does God speak to them?
And what does God sound like?
 
Does he sound like Morgan Freeman?
Does he sound like Charleston Hesston?
Or Ned Flanders?
Or Homer Simpson?
 
Or just an annoying voice in your head,
Or just in your belly button or Phone??
 
Or are they just raving lunatics
Who think that God is calling them?
 
God does not in my opinion
Talk to idiots
 
Nor should he tolerate these fools any more
 
God does not send us hurricanes or tornados
To punish us
That is beneath his pay grade
 
God is God and is mysterious
And if he speaks to us at all
 
We surely do not understand
Anything he says
 
As we have surely screwed up
The teachings of his prophets
 
So I wish to end this by saying
Oh you false prophets
STFU
God is not calling you
And never has
Just SFTU already
 

​Rev.  Bakker says
When God says something to you,
 you don’t always know the exact time it’s going to happen,” Bakker thundered.
 
 “[So] stop beating up the prophets because God says,
 ‘Woe unto you when you beat up on the prophets.’”
 
God just called me up this morning with a message
He said,
Jake. This is God speaking
 I loved your poem,
“God Does Not Talk to Idiots.”
 
God, I don’t even know if you exist
How did you get my number
 
I am God you idiot and know everything
Or course, God Sir.
 
What’s up your royal highness?
Just God would do for now, Jake
Okay.
 
So Jake, I have a message for Rev. Bakker
And I want you to deliver it
You can email it in
As I am sure he will not like it at all
 
Why can’t you deliver it?
 
Because God roared
“I don’t talk to idiots.”
 
What’s the message?
 
Quit using my name in vain
Quit saying I call you
Quit saying I talk with you
 
I don’t know you from Adam
And I don’t like you
 
How dare you swindle 185 million dollars
From your followers
Using my good name
 
You sir are an asshole
And Satan has a room for you
Just confirmed it this morning
 
Oh my more thing, this article says
Bakker then threatened damnation on those who have ridiculed him over the years.
“If you don’t want to hear it, just shut me off,” Bakker said.
 
God laughed and said to me
I will shut him up for good for sure
And my TV is set to delete his face
 
Every time I turn it on
Tell him that as well
 
“Especially you folks that monitor me every day to try to destroy me.
And tell him that I am one of those who monitor him every day
 
And I do want to destroy him
 
He is bad for the whole brand you know?
 
Bakker went on to say
 
Just go away. You don’t have to be there, you don’t have to hear it. But one day, you’re going to shake your fist in God’s face and you’re going to say, ‘God, why didn’t you warn me?’
 
Tell him that is rich coming from such a con man
I have been warning people against these shysters
For centuries – it is in the bible after all
 
And He’s going say, ‘You sat there and you made fun of Jim Bakker all those years. I warned you but you didn’t listen
 
Yes Rev. Bakker warned you repeatedly ad nauseum
Until I wanted to vomit
 
But thought it would be best
to just let him rot in prison. Give him a taste of hell to come.”
 
“So Jake, will you accept this cosmic commission?”
 
Sure thing God.
 
And that ended my conversation with God
 
So Rev. Bakker, here’s the deal. God is angry at you
And your friends for misrepresenting the word of God
All these years and for ripping for the gullible
And living the high life getting rich off your believers
 
I’d repent of your sins I were you
and I’d follow God’s parting words
 
Finally just tell Rev. Bakker and his fellow false prophets
STFU before I smite you to Hell”
 

​ 
I have bad teeth
Really bad behaving teeth
All my life I have battled my teeth
 
And many crooked dentists
Have gotten rich off trying to fix
These damn crooked teeth of mine
 
I always wished I could have perfect teeth
Perfect vision
Perfect hearing
Perfect athletic body
 
But instead I have crooked teeth
Bad vision
Bad hearing
And an uncoordinated body to boot
 
Thus is my fate
And I have learned to accept
These damn crooked teeth
And my visits to crooked dentists

 

​Sitting in the dental chair
Undergoing dental surgery
While the dentist probes
And tortures me
With his instruments of pain
 
The Frank Zappa song plays over and over
The torture never stops
The torture never stops
 
And I think of the mad dentist
In Little House of Horrors
The Jack Nicolson character
Who screams Pain is good
 
As he assaults his patients
Doing root canals
Without anesthesia
 
And so I endure the torture
Of the dentist
In the vain hope
I can save my teeth
 
Until the next time
I undergo dental torture
The song faces away
And I slowly recover
 
Then as I leave
I am confronted with the bill
And the song roars back to life
 
The torture never stops
the torture never stops 

​I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
Have to go to the dentist
For my twice yearly torture session
 
In order to save my remaining teeth
I must endure the never ending pain
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
I must have known over 100 dentists
During my 61 years around the sun
 
Some were good, some were great
A few became friends
A few became enemies
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
All tortured me
Saying it was for my own good
To save my crooked wicked teeth
 
My teeth are bad
Wicked, misbehaving
 
Rotten to the core
And always have
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
I tried orthodontic braces
As a child
Gave it up as an adult
 
Did everything except implants
So many crowns
So much dental work
 
My teeth are gold plated
Monuments to the dental artistry
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
A few dentists were exceptionally good
A few exceptionally bad
A few were crooks by and by
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
My current dentist is good
He keeps the chit chat down
Does not lecture me on his political views
 
Imagine having a dentist praise GW Bush
Or Trump taking your forced silence
As acceptance of his right wing views
 
Imagine a dentist talking endlessly
About her children’s latest escapade
While drilling away
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
And imagine a sexy dentist
Or hygienist working away
As you think of her in bed
 
And can’t get that thought
Out of you head
As they drill and poke
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
Yes I have a love hate relationship
With dentists
Can’t stand them
Can’t stand the pain
 
But they save my teeth
And save my smile
And so I forgive them
One and all
 
I have the dentist blues
I have them bad
 
 

​my shooting star
you came
and you were gone
we never said goodbye

​the earth used to be flat
not any more

her breasts used to be flat
not any more

this is called
awakening

​let us dance 
together you and I
cheek to cheek
entwined

I shall dance polka
you may dance tango
or vice versa
or whatever

the music doesn't matter
musicians are insane
the dance doesn't matter
we are drunk

let us just dance

Jason Hackett is an English Lit. Major who put his writing skills to good use as an advertising copywriter. He wrote his way up through the ranks and, twenty-plus years later, Jason is now owner and creative director of HAPI, an ad firm located in his hometown of Phoenix, AZ. Every day, he can be found banging away at his keyboard, playing with words and concepts. Jason’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Journal of American Poetry and Slippery Elm Literary Journal.

I fell into a coma I can’t get out of.
A long trip from a house roof’s tip
Toppled me from a sturdy stance
Into a tumbling dance,
Dropping two stories into an ambulance
Ten miles to a hospital bed
Where tubes and slow-moving vitals
Hang onto my life’s last thread.
 
I woke up alert within my subconscious.
The cavernous, black mushiness
Would normally scare the heck
Out of my claustrophobia
If it weren’t for the morphine drip’s
Dali trip, A Persistence of Memory,
Time melting my life away,
Ticking down to the end-of-me.
 
A faceless nothing yells, get up.
My subconscious, consisting
Of a small band of active neurons,
Survivors of the fall,
Screams at me to dress,
Clean the mess of
My life piled in thousands of fragments
Before me on the floor,
Faces and places I know I can’t remember
In no order of importance.
Antagonizing me, organizing me  – 
Piece by piece, face by face, memory by memory –
Prioritizing my mental rehab, it says,
Will put my brain back together well enough
To wake my life up.
 
I ignore the voice for others more familiar,
Way, way out, muffled
As if through a pillow.
They cry worried.
My chest invisibly heaves
My cry back for their pain that
Stings as much as mine.
A finger twitch attempts an SOS,
A call of distress,
To assure them I’m alive, mending the switch
The fall smashed to bits,
Turning my consciousness off.
 
Damage prevents anything from getting through,
Signals too, regardless of my efforts. 
My thoughts refuse to straighten,
My hopelessness greatens;
Re-ordering pictures,
Memories irretrievable,
Too inconceivable for my damaged brain.
 
Slowing alive and quickening dead,
Sorting my life’s wreck on the floor,
From which, in my frustration, opens a door.
The faceless voice of my subconscious
Looks worried.
Resist, it says hurried,
That is death’s door.
It insists, get back to work
Putting your life back together.
 
My curiosity bests me.
I push through the door
Out onto a tranquil beach
Set in an oyster shaped cove,
Rumbling with perfect waves.
The sunshine feels like shade,
Cool and never burning.
There is a stand where I can order a beer,
A fish taco, a steak too, whatever I want,
And cheer a band playing hits from every band perfectly
Led by a woman plucking two lyres
With the air of a siren.
 
Friends not seen since their passing
Are amassing in front of the band dancing.
The voice at my shoulder pulls me back
Toward the cavernous black mushiness.
 
I resist the voice like I didn’t the door.
The sand in my toes feels too good.
The salt flavored breeze puts my mind at ease.
I follow a trail from the beach up to a mountain
To a great eagle sculpted fountain gushing
Into a waterfall rushing into a pool filled with trout
Swimming hungrily about,
Imbued with a golden hue. 
Waiting on the shore is
An available chair that looks
An awful lot like a seat from Lambeau field,
With a fishing rod hungry for a catch.
 
 
I see a small table with framed pictures of my family,
Wife, kids, grandkids, friends, a well-lived life
Placed as an unfair reminder from the
Synapses struggling to survive
My body dying,
Trying to refocus me on what’s at stake.
 
If I live, I will be stuck in a black mushiness
Dragging out hope unfairly
For loved ones who
Need to move on with their lives,
As I need to move on with mine.

My unconscious decision:
Set them free from me, lovingly,
Free from the dread of a life tied to a bed,
Tube fed, thoughts unable to be said,
Watching their love dissolve to wishing
I was gone, a love hanging on, like my life,
By a thread,
Not the way I want to be remembered dead.
Eventually, it will not be me suffering
But them,
My refusal refuses to let that happen.
 
I hold a finger up to my friends dancing,
Waving me over.
Tell them to order for me a beer,
Ready a cheer.
I hug my subconscious, defeated, staring,
Thank it for caring.
I wish I could somehow signal I am okay
Up there to let them know.
I cannot today.
But they will arrive someday
To embraces of their beautiful faces,
With them an embrace of my decision
To return to the door
That leads to the black mushiness.
Why I decided, as a caring soul should,
As any loving husband, father, grandfather, friend would,
To close the door on my life for good.
 
 

Agonizing, unbearable pain
Only hell can inflict
Bends ruptured flesh into unnatural
And nauseating writhing
Desperate to rid the hurt, unknowing how.
 
Clenched hands sweep the air frantically
For solace, or maybe God.
 
A life not going according to plan
Gains premature admission to an emergency room.
 
Nurses rush, push buttons,
Make calls and ask questions too calmly.
They must know something horrible.
What secrets aren’t they sharing?
 
Worst fears, real or imagined,
Unleash a thick, morbid fog,
Suffocate the emptiness of the baby’s room.
 
The doctor is being gotten
As the gurney slides in a controlled hurry
Under florescent lights scurrying backwards
Numbed by the sight of a thousand times before.
Worry is nothing to them but funny-looking.
 
The hallway leads to new territory.
Eyes lock fleetingly, more scared
Than on the day they were married.
Emotions unsuccessfully decipher the future.
 
Hands push together evenly against the
Pain of unknowing, yet are also lopsided.
Her hand holds a life safe.
His hand holds two lives threatened. 
 
Sedation calms the fright
Enough to make, “It’s going to be alright,” believable.
Seemingly a hundred scalpels launch at her skin.
 
 
Her body explodes open like a shot melon.
Blood splatters on faces, floors and walls. 
Doctors, soaked in red, work hard for life.
 
The scene scalps mind from reality.
The room disassociates into a macabre movie set,
A slaughterhouse where fiendish demons dance
Deliciously around the beloved protagonist,
Hacking her soul
To feast on the center of her universe.
 
Tears wash away the disgust at such a thought
Breaking apart his frame of mind.
Doctors have one take to get this right.
No extra cuts, too many have already occurred.
Too much blood has spilled between them.
 
The choreography of pointing, cutting and shouting,
Machines beeping and breathing, finally, halts.
Pain leaves the room in excruciating silence.
The bloodbath aftermath takes on the pallor
Of dying skin
Awaits the verdict of whether it is to turn pink again.
 
A hopeful scream rises to turned heads.
Whose cry is so grateful for suffering to be done?
More silence. Fatigued silence.
Whether cry of a new life,
A new death, or both,
Tears greet every ending.
May they all rest in peace.
 
 

​Before salt and sand,
Spots on hands,
Before time etched its presence
On souls, skin and eyes,
Before minds got wise
To how weariness bends backs.
 
Worry- and worldly-free,
Smiles carved from the contentment
Of just being,
Returned to again be,
For a blink anyway,
Innocence, freed
From yellowed Polaroids
And fuzzy 8mm memories.
 
To when the band
Was still a secret crush
Felt in their hearts only,
In no rush to be heard on the radio,
Before fame had yet to brush them
With ubiquity and politics,
And misappropriated world responsibilities.
 
Silvered, tattooed, concert Ts,
Worn thin on thickened skin,
Piercings filled in,
Images their children laugh at,
Gather to protest obsolescence.
 
The lights darken.
The teleportation begins.
The band plays time backwards,
A cassette rewinding the years
To the exact moment
Of youth’s perfection.
 
Rusted vocal cords
Dig up buried lyrics,
Sing loudly
As if no one’s watching.
 
Silhouettes twist in darkness, hidden,
Uncaring of mirrors, birth dates, cards dealt,
High on vigor’s exuberance
Veins too long ago felt.
 
Age sneers at them, jealously.
Decades get snubbed out
On heels like cigarettes,
Flicked to the floor,
As if all those years between past and present
Never existed,
As if they weren’t close acquaintances,
As if they didn’t co-exist in the same body together. 


The speed at which
Music passes through air
Moves slower than time’s ticking
Which brought them there,
Succumbs to the trance
Of a spell conjured up by the band
Freezing now in sets.
 
The present folds inward,
Wholly surrendering.
Adolescence runs carefree through open fields
Happy to have eternity back again.
Off they go joyously, tears in eyes,
Love in hearts, youth in hand,
Dancing to the sweet melodies of former selves,
Capturing back when in a bottle.
 
 

​Down the corridor history dares not go, she is there
Entangled in remorse’s snare,
Waiting for my words to cut her free.
A thorn in my heart                                                                                       
From the first second’s start
Lasting twenty-two years,
Uncomfortably prods my dormant love while
Conjuring wasted memories
Littered with land mines and difficult smiles.
Freedom she yearns?
In her chest her fearing burns,
Becoming ever more painfully aware in
Her cancer’s impatience.
How dare she
Be set free
From my impossibility,
From the ruinous hatred she indelibly inked
On my heart’s now impenetrable walls,
Forevermore steeled against future love’s falls.
Me she calls?
I will let her pass,
What stands between us, I shall not.
I will not purge her from herself.
She will die alone in regret,
Buried sinfully and uncleansed,
I with upturned lips.
This decision, I know,
Will haunt me as eternally
As it did her, though.
Dying crying
With spoiled repentance on my stilling chest
Pressing heavier upon my final breaths,
Which will feel no different than my life with her,
Still crushing the life out of me.
My burden, you see,
By not releasing her
I chose not to be released by her.
‘Til death do us part, her final act,
Goodbye kiss, parting pact
To me, to carry over my misery,
Just as she.
So that I too shall pass,
Imprisoned.
 
 
 

​As the beating of the wings of birds
my mother’s fluttering eyelashes
seen with my infant eyes
as I studied the face of the first person I ever loved.


As the beating of the wings of birds
my friends’ fluttering hands
emphatic with anger, comic with hilarity, revelatory with gossip
as I listened to both their wisdom and their folly.


As the beating of the wings of birds
the fluttering in my chest
the first time I saw him, the first time he touched me
in all times thereafter.


As the beating of the wings of birds
the soft fluttering of ancient wings
the wings of those who come to comfort me, sit at my bedside
sharing with me my final hours.

​Crawling and teetering across vast distances
Around objects of gargantuan proportions.
 
Always running,
Through instructive days,
Tucked among an illusion of unending summers,
Crafted and carefree.
 
Progressing across miles of possibilities,
With life open at the far end.
 
The final glide up
Through the enduring curvature of  time.
 
 
 

​ 
As Tantalus pleaded,
All only ever out of reach,
So shall I,
For the alchemy of properly positioned syllables,
The perfect mathematical equation of sounds
Whispered out from a broken heart,
That allows me to have
That one last minute again
Before you take your last breath.
 
As Garbo bid,
From well lit corners of her stage,
So shall I
To get that perfect retake,
The best possible script written,
Delivered in most dramatic fashion
To re-create the final scene,
To assuage my grief
At the stunning irreversibility
Of your death.
 

On the day no one was looking,
Everyone aged,
Only by a day,
But that day went fast,
As the cards were shuffled so quickly,
It was as if
A parlor trick was being presented.
And people wept, knowing
The chance to slow down time
Had eluded them,
The clock’s hands would spin.
When no one was listening,
Life spoke secrets
For earning immortality,
Long lost knowledge confessed.
And all were deemed unlucky,
The flip of the cards
Was so loud that they drowned out
Any chance to catch the words.
And people wept, knowing
That to live forever
Had eluded them,
That last day would come.

​

​This lone week plays as a century long,
With each new normal nothing more
Than a ridiculous display,
Aberrant,
A pretentious pageant with no real import.
To comport myself by common standards
While I stand at a crossroads ,
Every juncture leading to furthering
The weight of my bereavement,
Indecision, at this time, the only reality for me.
 
 
Your intentions, seemingly admirable,
But logic is not useful to a broken heart,
One ruptured by loneliness,
A body disabled with grief,
As I try to stand on legs
That feel as if they belong to a lesser creature,
One without cartilage or bone.
 
The only lightening that I sense
Is a part of my soul torn from me,
Given freely by me and allotted to him,
So that I may, in some way, go with him
And he would not be alone.
 
So when you, here in my space, seek to distract me
To have me believe in a happier world,
Your voice, meant to soothe, only serves as an irritant,
As do all living things at this time.
Even the rising sun preceding the fair weather
Arrives as a mocking burlesque,
I can almost hear the mirth
From every budding tree and woody shrub.
 

​Leave me now,
To my own imaginary universe,
Replete with memories of my choosing,
And the belief that
He still breathes in the other room,
This deception will be my salvation
For future weekly centenaries.
 

 

​I slumped down on the hardwood bench
Tired of being everyone’s punching bag
Nothing in my life was smooth water.
 
I looked down at the dove white keys
Separated by the midnight black ones
I closed my eyes as my soft finger
Landed on the icy cold keys
Giving it a chance to be heard
Just as I would to meeting someone for the first time.
 
The sound echoed, similar to rippling water
My other fingers began to play on the frostbitten keys
Making beautiful sounds as it pops out of its eternal winter.
 
Soon my fingers twirl like a ballerina
Spinning, skipping, and jumping across the snow like keys
They soar like millions of sparks
Pressing harder and faster
Almost feeling hot as lava.
 
 

​You are like a puzzle
So unique in your own way.
With colors and shapes
That piece together who you are.
And the puzzle is bot complete
Until you place the last piece
In the correct spot
To show the work of art
You become.

​Stargazer lilies sprouting in a summer garden;
Growing a little each day.
 
Sunlight shining over the leaves;
Water pouring down, giving life to them.
 
All mature and ready to begin blooming color;
Giving the world something to smile about.
 
However, one is late and is not opening;
For it is still growing and taking its time.
 
The first one dies, and the others follow its lead;
But left the slow one behind.
 
And…Oh my! What colors it shows;
It just needed a little extra time to grow.
 
 

​Eddie Awusi is a Nigerian poet of Isoko extraction. He is a graduate of English and Literary Studies department from the prestigious Delta state university,  Abraka. He has been published in numerous poetry magazines and anthologies.

​Far removed from the society of man,
She tucked herself behind a dank and dingy night,
Behind the sound of eager muezzin;
Clad in mascara 
And a black disenchanted chador;
a broken frame,
Governed by fears and extremism.
She love her groom but hate the war.
Lumps her weak and slumped breast
Into the mouth of her infant baby, 
that beg a question of the world.
Always led through monstrous indignity 
Of sexual molestation and violation:
Tortured into compliance and complacence,
Fled from embattled cities into captivity,
This bearer of a caliphate's tales.
What more cruel torture, barbaric killing,
Cursed overture, did her sight grip? 
Dovetailing into the night,
Prayer book in arms.

​Rolling and rolling into explosion of passion,
Tonight is a Burgundy wine,
Tipsily insisting on my flesh.
I strike a gold, in my debut steps.
As unto a ballet appearance, I come-
Tasting bliss from the ballroom's floor.
This night is such a great adventure.
Charming me with the flirtation of beauties.
Who tempt me into a wild fever of humour.
Glee seizing the night, with epochal
High-heeled shoe ladies,
Cabaret singers,
Pole dancers.
Booming opium of seductive music.
Twerking and contortionists butts.
Frills of gathered fragrances.
You may never get to hear,
The latest version of my laughter,
As the night, warm my eyebrows.

​I have held your face with a favoured bowl,
Through unrepentantly dark and ignoble hours,
Through damnable downpour of ignominy,
Through acoustic embitterment of libelous accusations,
Through downtown memory lanes,
Watching as the world ski toward brutal peace,
Whilst I wade through,
My most abysmal and traumatic trials.
You were my life's breath, my annexed light's
Indigo beauty then, which you still are:
My candlelit tongue of fire.
Will you still radiate the old radiance
That brightened my world while I am in darkness
Or will you repudiate and rebuke me
Like an eclipse frightening the living daylights?

Christopher Hopkins grew up on a council estate in Neath, South Wales during the 1970’s. This fractured landscape of machines and mountains, with the underlying ‘Hiraeth’ in welsh life has developed into a distinctive voice and soul in his poetry.  He currently resides in Canterbury and works for NHS cancer services.
His debut chapbook ‘Take Your Journeys Home’ is due for release with Clare Songbirds Publishing House later this year.
Christopher has had and due to have poems published in Backlash Press, Ibis Head Review, The Journal (formally the Contemporary Anglo – Scandinavian poetry), Rust & Moth, Harbinger Asylum, The Blue Nib Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, VerseWrights, Tuck Magazine, Dissident Voice magazine, Poetry Superhighway,  Duane's PoeTree, Outlaw Poetry. Christopher’s spoken word poetry has also featured in a podcast of Golden Walkmen Magazine. 

​There is the wonder,
in the anxiety of the starlings,
oiled,
starved.
How beauty
can fall out of something,
how their shiver made a whale.
 
A sky dance 
of a fattening shadow,
round and full,
stretching and curved.
They are the pitch and duration,
to a stave,
of supersonic candy floss,
sitting on the coral birth.
 
Like a fluxing crown
above the lines of slates, 
the black church dagger,
and the empty carpark mile,
all still to roll over, into life,
a drowning chorus 
of a hundred thousand frightened mouths.
In the sky’s reflection,
we the our ghosts
in their solid state.
 
 

​ 
Unmoored from the day.
Still to be lost in ambitious dreaming,
to pay the ransom to my sleep.
 
In the field of passing I found myself,
where ten thousand tillers danced
to the whistling song of a mockingbird,
 
rhyming scorn on a day thats done.
Then the breeze grew in heart,
and the noise that came
 
like the sudden purr of rain,
from flow and tussle
of the ears and leaf,
 
where the silver rivers ran.
On towards the milk white stone
with all the stars in pocket,
 
the kicked brown dirt under tender foot,
stirring as mosquitos dancing.
Unbound from earth into the well of dreaming.
 
How dull seems the day
to the body at rest,
to a mind freed in dreaming.
 
 

​An arm of smoke,
rising.
Debrided to the bony white.
Dove tail lost
cast over sky,
and the autumn rainbows
are falling apart.

The wood smoke weave
hides the veins of tobacco,
as flames turn back
to their black hard state.
 
School bell missed again.
In its place,
feats of emprise,
and all the forest animals bow
to the Prince of hide and seek.
 
But all too soon
the light has gone.
Shadow arms
around the shoulders,
as cold seeps up
the pin hollows in the bone.
 
The police man torch
a polar star
to home.
Their Bibles unsmiling by the fire place.
 
For the sake of quiet adventures,
take the hidings waiting.
Run, run away child,
away from the thieves of being.

​Twilight,
is a time you should always spend with your lover.
 
The moments,
when time travel is possible.
 
When the frog belly gold
gunned on the walls of the forest,
pull your recall and complaint into the warmness,
while there is still colour to the silhouettes.
 
Otherwise the eyes of the forest
will have your heart,
and sundown will be your cave.
 
 

​A cotton hill looking for a home.
Drifting to a blessing,
paper thin.
 
In a breath,
the warmth is feathered out,
as dandelion seeds on a cow’s tongue.
 
And as quick as the sun’s mask came,
the un-clouding of the marble blue,
the rays come again,
and come the only reconciliation we have.
Our un-paused atonement,
through no action
but being.
 
Shoulders fall that inch,
and in that moment
we all have perfect skin.
 
Plum black to the copper brown,
closed idle stare,
in such a passing,
into the light of summer,
we are absolved
from an injurious past.
 
Like the sun,
rinsing its hands
on the newness of a day.
 
 

As you lay dying,
sifting in and out of light,
I sit watching the silence
of each breath scratch your throat.
 
I feel trapped in your living room,
like a fly caught
between the window and the screen
your flesh - a scream,
a road less traveled,
your moan – the bones of radiation
dismantled by the blaze
like the melted wings of Icarus,
thinning into forgetting
how to drink from a straw,
the fall came swift
like the bite of morphine
and September
never felt so melancholic.
 
Yet I sense an unearthly
peace about you
as you lay face to face with mortality,
a tunnel you’ve stumbled
through, but now see
the light filled opening
at the end,
like a moth to flame
unwavering in the comfort of dying.
 
A flower crumbles
and the petals crash
like trees struck by lightning,
I sit struck by the grief
of letting go.
 
A sense of solitude swarms
through a room of stone faces,
myself, consumed by the tomb
you bare upon your back.
 
 
 
Looking at you…
I’ve never felt so human.
I’ve never felt so powerless.
I can’t see you anymore,
body buried by the hunger
you feel for sleep
as you speak in a muddled voice,
a voice that was stolen from you
without permission
the poison cloistered
then spread its web
and now you lay dying
and I sit
watching – contemplating
life’s fragility.
How the moments pass us,
how each breath should be cherished
and each vanity relinquished.
How each word we speak
should be a fountain
to a scorched tongue.
Each deed – a seed of sincerity and love.
For time passes unprovoked
like a cold stream rushing over rocks.
 
I sit and watch in the quiet,
pondering the fly’s escape,
does it not know the window
is slightly open?
Perhaps freedom is found in that space?
 
Redemption searched you out
as you laid on a hospice bed
awakened through faith
in the God who hung on a tree
atop the hills of Golgotha,
divine hope of the ever-after
which fed you fruit in a cage.
You slipped through this life
like flesh on barbed wire,
Your body – a cave starved by cancer,
Your life came and went,
the hours, days, months, years
quietly faded into forever.
 
 
So I watch and pray that warmth
floods your being,
that you enter through
the gates of leisure
with head held high
shining like a million morning suns,
sheltered by love and mercy
the width of the boundless sky.
 
I sit watching humbled
like Moses at the bush.
I empty the hell from my heart
and witness the brevity of life
crack before my eyes.
 
The fly buzzes between
the window and screen,
finally
finding
the window’s
opening.
 

​I saw your mom today
walking slowly down
Eastwood with a cane.
I looked up and saw
the rumbling passing train
that sped like your life
to a screeching halt.
 
We exchanged hugs,
embracing each other,
she’s traveled a long way,
alone,
without you by her side.
The look in her eyes
tells me you’re still alive.
We reminisce for a while,
sun beating down on us
like the loss we feel,
as we feel the bond
between mother and son.
Refilling my cup with memories,
I tell her, I love her, and hug her,
eyes welling up, about to gush
like a geyser, deep crying into deep
I tell her, I could have done more,
the guilt doesn’t seem to surprise her.
She feels the same sentiment,
and begins to shuffle through her purse
digging in to grab her phone,
she shows me an old video
of you from New Year’s Eve.
You were waving your arms,
jamming to Bob Marley.
I see your smile, your laugh,
your wacky Jah Jah dance.
 
She holds tight onto the phone
like she holds tight
onto your memory,
It’s just the two of us
standing on the sidewalk,
laughing,
weeping,  
remembering.
 

​I met a drifter
in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood,
he slept at the local Salvation Army
and spent most of his days
at the library reading poetry.
He loved Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson.
He was a speed reader,
and he would read
a couple books every day,
mostly fiction, Sherman Alexie’s
“Reservation Blues,”
was his favorite.                                                   
He was a stranger until I smiled,
opening the door to language,
giving back to me what I gave him.
I called him “Chief.”
He was in his fifties,
though appeared much older.
The harshness of an unsheltered life
took its toll upon his features,
yet he was full of youth inside,
pockets full of candies and mints.
 
We connected right away,
never judged each other
on how we looked,
we were real, unpretentious
like two children in a sandbox.
He dressed unassumingly,
second hand clothes,
but that’s the thing I loved about him,
he didn’t hide behind his attire,
no intention to impress
he wore a worn out demeanor.
Yet he had something,
though he had nothing.
 
One summer day I ventured off
to the library, looking
for him at the corner carrel desk,
he wasn’t there,
I checked the fiction section,
he wasn’t there,
lastly I took a gander
through the poetry isle,
but no sight of him,
nowhere to be found.
The next day I did the same,
nowhere to be found.
I asked the librarian if he had seen him,
he told me “chief” had passed out
from heat stroke,
and was taken to the local hospital.
 
I drove slowly, periodically glancing
at a poem collection book
on the passenger seat.
It was Emily Dickinson.
I came to a red light
and opened the book
randomly landing on the poem,
“The Chariot,”
“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
and immortality.”
Time stilled like gridlock,
the summer wind blew through
the rolled down window,
I brushed the sweat from my forehead,
contemplating life and death...
 
We don’t have a choice in when we die,
but we do have a choice in how we live,
so I made a choice that day
driving to the hospital,
I made a choice to be a friend.
 
 

​ 
The hospital gown and blanket slide
into his crotch. His mummified left foot,
despite two or three amputated toes,
seems to leave no room for us
 
in his partition. Ain’t gonna worry bout it,
he says, eyelids drooping over the heavy
syllables. Bubbles rise in the tube
of the vacuum pump, rise from the shrink-wrapped
 
stump of his amputated leg, and climb the rail
behind his headrest. Just leave it all in the Lord’s
hands. Silence grows into light years
between his syllables. Bubbles rise over his shoulder
 
from the yellow catheter taped to his clavicle,
draining. We do what we can, he says,
and I agree, running out of things to say.
I still feel like I’m about to bump into his leg.
 
 

​Rising a hair’s breadth
by March, the gently arcing
line of her stomach cuts
 
the corners of an expanding
hexagon. June rounds
the corners into a sphere,
 
a circle, the symbol bellying
within her womb, obfuscating
the stark reality of blood
 
vessels splotching red her itchy
skin, stretchmarks
opening like fissures and blue
 
veins branching like lightning 
before the storm.
 
 

​After morning rain, starlings
comb through the grass. Cobwebs
gleam like ligaments
of moonlight between the cast iron
bars of my storm door.
 
This is where I enter, a character
in my own life. Like the robin,
I am never far from myself. When she
removes herself from her nestlings, 
perches atop the chain links
 
and cheeps, she is there with them,
and they hear it, gathering
within themselves the courage
to answer, to climb out of bed and see
what happens next. 
 
 

​On a barstool at the Student Union
in the big window glass of my own reflection,  
I am biopsy-incised, indented,
my palsied hand involuted in my lap as if cradling
genitals in public.
 
               I am ten years older than the freshmen
               forming teams behind me,
               wild teams of testes and ovaries
               jostled together for the game into one
               competitive orgy.  
 
Forked morsels of my ketogenic pancake
crumble across the countertop.
If I’d been diagnosed before we married,
you would have been happy.