​Advent
 
The light nights are closing fast, as winter now advances,
Autumn runs straight and true on December’s snowy traces,
And icy, fern stippled windows stare out on bare stripped branches.
Profitable thoughts turn their attention eagerly towards Christmas’ gaudy festivities,
And fills each lascivious children’s list with ever more extravagant promises.
The Season’s theme is now a rising urge to spend,
To plunder bank account and credit card as if money has no end;
And somewhere in amongst the gaudy lights and shimmering decorations
Lies a modicum of truth hidden deep inside the celebrations.
 
Christmas Eve
 
Listen, while the frosty air congeals to turgid white,
And mystery intensifies the keenness of this magical night;
Where expectant faces peer wide eyed at the stars,
Hoping for the slightest glimpse of reindeer driven fairy travellers;
I sing, of conjoured myths that now bedeck each gilded home,
And lips that speak of holly, and ivy and mistletoe.
This only feast, this opportunity for excess,
Comes once a year with such dire disingenousness
That what it represents has long since been forgotten,
And replaced with something altogether more morally rotten.
Yearly, the Yuletide Feast raises a cornucopia of images,
An imago frozen in time, of Hunts and Horsedrawn Carriages.
Snowy Streets and frosted glass and rosy cherubim faces
Peer expectantly over notched windows singing Carols down the ages.
A feast of splendour, a pure cacophony of fir driven delights,
Of goose and gander, puddings and porter and dazzlingly flashing lights;
Of seasonal blessings and best wishes for the year after
Greet friend and foe alike in one mirthful extravaganza.
Seen through the rosy hue of nostalgia’s blunt devices,
You miss the whole subtlety of it all and blunder on regardless;
The Candle counts the fading hours as the year draws to a close,
and extravagant spending arises; on turkey, and pudding and Porter
Let’s sit around the fireside and savour this Dickensian wonder,
Of perfect snowy scenes filled with joy and seasonal splendour.
Fir bedecked shops hung with sheets of fatted geese
Give rise to visions of a veritable cornucopian feast.
A gift wrapped illusion from an age of bloody rage,
Imported images from other lands and distant pagan days.
An iconic miser defines the spirit of future promise,
Who turns from inner despite to outward beneficence,
In a single night vague spirits convince him of his folly,
To be much more merciful to the poor and needy.
In past images, resurrected for his instruction
He sees the future picture of his own inevitable destruction
The death of siblings, the hot hate of business failure and shame
Stack the odds against him to lengthen his burdensome chain.
And so in the great Victorian tradition this grateful benefactor,
Lives an altogether fuller life for his peaceful hereafter,
O! Marley, that you struggled upwards from the tomb,                                            }
And with such fearful and terribly ghoulish aplomb                                                }
Instructed your business partner in all those terrors yet to come!                            }
Listen now the merry music of another contrived song,
Meaders through snowy minds to carry us all along.
Fir and mistletoe, the holly and the ivy all testify to this,
That the yuletide feast is nothing more than one great antithesis.
Capital, for the spending spree that tempts some into debt,
Those gullible parents hypnotised by every extravagant gift.
The value of the season is now measured by every till that rings
Up piles of unnecessary, and largely irrelevant offerings.
The momentum of the season begins long before summers out,
With foreign holidays barely ended, Pandemonium raises its ugly snout.
Hits us from all sides with lurid enticements to spend,
Bombards with tempting offers and the “must have” latest trend;
An unrelenting raid that continues for months without end,
Gullible for the need to please their children and not to offend,
Parents ponder hard on gifts that will hardly get a mention;
Overwhelmed by gaudy parcels that purchase such shallow affection,
To while away the day and avoid any hint of close attention.
Such is this mishmash of symbol and ceremony,
Drawn from pagan rites with just a hint of Christianity,
 
Epitaph
 
The cold dawn of Christmas morn lies heavy and overcast with rain,
The distant Dickensian dystopia has failed us all again!
No snowy scenes greet this promised day of days,
No snowy robin or biscuit box scene magicks this long awaited holiday.
The depressing damp soils whatever festive cheer,
And the day unfolds as wet and cheerless as any other day of the year!
 

​Fluid for the lies that seem to blind us all,
From Eve’s first words that presided Adam’s dramatic fall!
History declares a form of words that ever lack true meaning,
That damn the common man’s exploitative leaning,
And floats to the top that most destructive of common canticle
That is destined to preside over many years of pointless debacle……
Wisdom’s pure invention is a lie with corrosive substance,
That inverts “Common Sense” with unbelievable nonsense,
And turns a grassy knoll into a minor insignificance.
Opinions now deluge the ordinary man’s narrow perceptions,
Turns important events into mere conspiratorial obsessions,
And if there are Flying Saucers, no-one is making any public confessions.
And still the ascent of man from ape to human is hard science fact,
Even though the evidence points to an altogether different tack;
In this no debate is allowed to stimulate the brain,
The thief of pure invention has got away with it again!
The airwaves are filled with such evolutionary fantasies,
As time and again the Creation Adversaries
Fill our heads with pure invention and outright lies!
Evolution’s darker recesses are a racists’s scientific charter,
Of favoured races and survival of the fittest order;
Words and fillips still contest the heated air,
Where shallow promises compliment such heady fare;
Home spun wisdoms grace these crowded confessions,
To condescend to wealth and the grubbiest City Professions.
Bribes for every piece of work that he can take,
The Sound Economist proposes another entertaining fake!
Ah…the vicious banter of another great debate,
Alerts the whips to reign in the most troublesome legate.
Power hangs by a single thread of this tenuous co-operation,
Where even the slightest disagreement will send it all to oblivion.
The face of power smiles at his sidekick’s whimsical observations,
On Europe, Pensions and the boundary alterations;
Yet sits like a yellow lapdog and begs for this slightest titbit,
A titular non-job, the Prime Minister’s non-sequitur Deputy;
A gun without powder, primer or bullet,
An insincere secretary, a mere political Pundit;
And as the Prompter prompts, the Puppet squeaks;
All blue rinse manifesto and Daily Mail speak.
 

Chapter Four
 
                    (our two soldiers of fortune are recruited as World policemen)
 
                  Boom Boom (you’re dead)
                                             Out go the lights?
 
The Sewer King contemplates the complex issues of world minions,
seeks here and there from flatterers such agreeable opinions
as would turn a fisticuffs into a full blown Armageddon
and fulfil his shoddy, so-called saintly ambition
to rule the world; Faithless Lieutenant cringes by his side,
a grey man who rules a far off, insignificant isle,
who dreams of empires, and smiles a sickly, saving grace;
envious rapture distorts his otherwise featureless face!
“A special relationship, sire, exists between yours and mine;
we two, together can police this troublesome quagmire.
Your hand and mine in friendship, this whole world clasps,
Salvation, my lord, from rank anarchy and collapse.”
“Speak, Lord Faithless Lieutenant, tell me what you see,                             }
let the cause be just for such a dangerous prophesy,                                   }
(and make sure there’s enough bankable readies in it for me!)                    }
The Undertaker of Filth and World Decay
exhumes the images of siege and ritualised horseplay;
Here and there maniacs sieze the initiative of another uprising
to murder millions and impose another ruthless cleansing!
A story! A story! The Sewer King dictates,                                                }
and shoves his fool back out, onto the stage                                            }
to earn his keep in one more extrapolation of altered states;                   }
”My Lord, you do me more than my slight skill deserves!
Yet the more of dreams unfold a sorrier state of affairs.
Who could resist the solid foundation of this integrity?
A whole Nation believes it is the benchmark of international morality,
righteousness and honesty; a second coming, a twentieth century
new messiah in a land of golden opportunity.
Sits as Judge AND Jury, dispenses judgement circumspect                       }
fawns to its Allies and potential overseas markets                                      }
(and hoards to itself it’s most profound military secrets!)                           }
Be-metalled, as a modern knight of the quickening death,
beyonetted end-forward, searching for that Herald of your last breath on earth,
head filled to bursting with Confidence’s confident sayings,
you heave about and deliver honourable, indecent slayings.
Shinybrite, sublime, a khaki clad eros,
wings on fire with his new, world killing ethos
of rigid right and worsening wrongs and crucified creeds,
where WEST meets EAST, and lays out the battle feast.
“What food is this?” a million slain already, my dear,
FREEDOM fells the iron restraints; old hatreds reappear.
Does anyone here remember hearing the TRUTH?
that reluctant phrase, that elusive gobble-de-gook……..
…there is no pain from it, that cannot be overlaid,
no searching revelation to wipe away your disdain;
you lurch from day to day and wonder for it all,
then out from your protective shell you finally crawl
to meet the dawn: a new age, my friend of indecent suffrage,
we are all nosed to the wheel in the name of fiscal carnage.

Steven Joyce is an Associate Professor of German and comparative studies at the Ohio State University, Mansfield campus.  He has published a book on G. B. Shaw entitled Transformations and Texts as well as a number of poems in literary journals including Kimera and Red River Review and Minimus.  His award winning book of essays entitled The Winds of Ilion appeared in 2011 and a book of poetry, The Apostate Djin, appeared in 2013.  He holds a Ph. D. in comparative literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and has published a number of articles on literary theory and criticism.
 

​It drifts through us
like a mist, a small cloud, a murky overcast.
Neither father that abandons family
nor mother who slips away down those back steps of longing
can colonize despair like IT does.
This monogamous sleight-of-hand,
What kind of trick is this?
When revealed we say
How Simple
How Clever
How Awful
The night that sets in between the needy rounds of applause
rises and fills like the waters of a great lock
slowly
inexorably
wantonly
until one day in dream’s night
it fills
and father mother brother sister disappear
as the magician takes a bow.

​Like a phantom with a spit curl
roiling, mumbling, gyrating
this Moche sea breathes offshore through a thick
and cold phlegm--a croup that rattles in the lungs
and spews mist from the tumbling troughs  
where the sea birds in gyre
ride the Humboldt current dark
and graven in the greyest of urgency
it gathers in the black canyons at depth
where conversation grins with alien teeth
and chides with cutting iridescence
the dark into slices of despair. . .
 
Life lacks common sense
the Moche in their dark world
lacking what looks like grace
or humor  yet the bones lay in a comic heap
on the desert floor, this desiccated Eden
of jaguar teeth and  spider gods
tumi and the gush of oxygenated blood
to appease suburban gods--monsters
with broad smiles and bloated heads.
 
Elsewhere but not far off
the turf unrolls and washes
the feet of the pre-Incan clean
with Mists that rise and float
above the plain ossified with the scribble
of cut and mutilated bone.
 
They never ask about
Al Paec his untoward appetites
or require the eight-armed decapitator god to say
why he looks like an octopus.
 
Their cleverness with gold and copper
green and red parrot feathers,
with ceramics and textiles notwithstanding,
these preincaicos in their copper colored enthusiasms
and iridescent evils bend and break
in sloughs of cessation no god finds satisfying.
 
 
 
In Huaca de la Luna land--Cajamarca
the Moche still watch
the waves that break and exhaust
their small excesses.
 
The sea this day its teeth
stained grey with coca, fatigue, and fear
does not smile
but argues in the deep channels and offshore valleys
the unseen movement—the hortatory violence
that remains unrecompensed.
 
I never feared the sea
until I came to Mollendo
the land of the Moche
and felt the mist
and saw the grey
and heard the water,
the rip tides tearing at the heart
of things
and in the back seat of the station wagon
that nearly rolled into the desert
on the way to Mollendo,
saw firsthand how finality can look with sandy eyes
through a girl’s unruly bangs hiding
the funny face of the decapitator god.
 
 
 

I have discovered
for the first time I
should say recovered
the eristic breath of Meno
and now believe that
 
the tree and the flower
the sun and the moon
the alpha and omega
have been mine
all along.
 
I forget here in Ohio
how much I know
of virtue and soul
of Eros and Agape
 
I dine at the house of Agathon,
the epideictic chatter between bites of dolmades
loud, the talk of virtue and goodness, strange
ideas I do not need on my trip—I look to Osiris
consolations I know in my pharaoh’s life--
cosmogonic sex or sipping Tenenit’s beer
some emmer wheat and figs.
 
These mounted thoughts like Nubian horsemen
scare me yet accompany me on my Journey
down darkly colorful corridors
dug with ferret teeth beneath sandstone I am cheered
at the clink and clank of my trove
my clunky numbers melted into geometric ingots
of orphic wisdom, my arithmetic coffin filled
with jostling Mnemosyne they bury
me with my sacred numbers
so I can speak the langue of the life to come
and chat with a god or two  . . .
 
You see its true
You can take it all with you.
 
 

A musty turn of heart
no nightingale, however
sweet its song
will sing
of annates or expectatives or precaria
that dwell in the breach
between Ohrmazd and Ahriman.
 
In their factories of contention
they split like woodcutters
the soulish thing from flesh and bone
then recede slinking
into dirty cowls and holy hoodies
gangsters hiding in transubstantiations
of stone and tree, wine and water
the benefices of self-loathing and scruffy hope in perpetuity--
first fruits rotting on the Tree.
 
We pray for belief
and for the day
when we no longer need to suffer
the logic of redemption
or the ecstasy of renunciation
and from the Venusberg or Brocken
enjoy the full cacophonous melody
of a god waking
to the human Other
curious and coy asking
“What are your Names, dear ones?”
 
 

​You candlewaster quack
You kobold with a pen
selling amulets and glass beads
pretty cloth and ribbons
to unwary sinners—innocents
foreswunke in lists of philanthropy and to-do.
 
Superior in their devout enthusiasms
and religious arts,
they buy up
your salves and ointments
and Philosopher’s Eggs by the dozens
nested in bright but fatal inquiry
and like the salvor who tastes for a living
hope “not today.”
 
They apply this poultice,
these fatty philistines and armchair patriots
and sink in viral comfort to wait . . .
 
They recall the amber nights,
the times when they manned and womanned the barricades
high atop the trundled palaver and ergonomic philosophies
of the sacral Self from here they slung
their taunts and sneers from the makeshift obstacle
thinking
it might endure or thwart
that body of empty stabilities waiting ten deep
to butcher up their heroisms.
 
And there they take their stand
at someone else’s rebellion
brave and happy to have been called
to the higher Self,
eager for otherworldly recompense
and the gaud of heavenly casinos, the gilded spas
that echo with grace
as redemption appears sail-first on the horizon
only to sail away.
 

I cannot see their faces
 
                                they are obscured -
                                                  in a suffocating mist.
                                    I am searching--
through sketched shadows   a forest emerging from a blinding fog.
 
                                         There is liquid here --
                                                        IT FILLS THE ROOM
toppling tipple—pouring through the snow-frosted glass
into the veins of my day.
The bodies are moving          I sense them   leaning in       There are rakes among them  Shoulders shoving forward
They’re stretching over sands; sweeping over oceans
to betray me.
With their scum-skimmed boots
black capes triumphing like Grand umbels —flags flittering in wind
Lifted skirts baring naked stems.
I see inside their pockets
                                                  theft trapped trinkets exposed
Wretched eyes filled with filthy conquests.
A polished watch                   pearls snatched from the sea—       
They do not shift out of the way.
 
                                     There is fire here--
I feel the flaming furnace thundering below
Bolts of lightning spearing into my wet weeping eyes
Grinding down
upon me like
anxious
teeth.
With the spread of their wing-tipped cloaks
they unmask talons beneath their white gloves
Hair roped down
to the waist like
a noose.
They watch me when I’m sleeping   
                                                       consuming me               
                                                                  Breath has left me--
I choose the stage— Even though it is pounded with fruit
And they will forget me.
                                  I will allow them to toss me skyward
                                                  passing me along their grime-flavored hands
 
 
                                                              Viewing my soul
                                                                                                by 
                                                                                                      chandelier-
                                                                                                                                light.

My heart
the melted waters of the Kahtnu,
carving through the mountains
that bar me in.
My husband
traveled by boat to come and catch it
                          A flowing glow of cerulean-blue in
the never-ending night.
                           He thought it might be magic
                                     My heart
                               a slippery fish in his hand.
 
My eyes
are salt lakes in the middle of an
Australian desert.
My husband
journeyed by camel to come collect them
                               Crimson pools of stillness —the
color of cherry blossoms blooming
                              —then white again.
                             He thought it might be magic
                                     My eyes
                             dusky ponds of sunset in his
                             hands.
 
My face
The Moon’s reflection on a Caribbean
Sea. The water filled with spice and
heat—an ocean brimming in music.
                              He swam out to hold me
                                      My portrait
                              evanescent on the rippling of waves
                              —a drifting dream—rain slipping
                             through fingers
 
                                          He knew it was magic.

​The bruise of the night sky riding the earth,
The comforting swaddle for a freshly born
son.
 
The coarse shroud of the mortician’s sheet,
Glimmer of hope
                                         in the shadow of sorrow.
 
Drawn lids—Closing eyes
The richness of snow on mountainous ranges,
Waterfall of hair —forest bejeweled in leaves.
 
The shield of your strength protecting from pain,
Seas sweeping sands
                                          the music of rain.

    When she cries the whole world
cries with her.
    The moon mourns,
 shrouding its body in a veil of clouds
    Filling her ink-pot with the muddled
pulp of hearts
     A methodical pen casting shadows
on prayers.
           
      Her pages spill in rivers.
                    Vowels collecting on shores
like castaway shells
       Ballads lost in a windswept
gesture
        Drifting like the blown wish of a
dandelion moon.
           
        Books gather their apothegms
like the jumbled bones
                  of a King’s
abandoned battlefield.
           Leaving confusion in their mounds
and piles of banishment.
          She has brought death to her desk
with the urgent sweep of her carriage
         Her bin,
                       the guillotines black bag.
 
                              We hear the echo of timber
                        falling!
                               We smell the bonfires
                         burning!
           
            I crumble on my tired mat
in the company of widows.
            We grieve poems like husbands
and watch them purl-away
                       On a river
                                     the color        
                                                 of
                                                communion
                                                            wine.
 

 
 

J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Leaves of Ink, Front Porch Review, Poetry Superhighway, Algebra of Owls, and in the anthology, Along the Way.

​When will we finally decide, resolve, step out, move on
from all this. History always has trouble sympathizing;
looking back on us they won’t be kind. I can picture
a noted historian, standing at his/her lectern pronouncing
judgment, analyzing step by step, trying to explain what
we have done, did to ourselves; his audience quietly taking
notes, revising events in their minds, knowing they would
have done better, cause and effect work best when filtered
through time, through distance. Let’s sit in the back row of
the lecture hall and listen to ourselves described, things we
are doing and/or not doing, watch them take notes, laptops
open, the date at the top of the page, then the list of names,
dates, events, see if they got our today there, today as we
stand/sit ready to decide, to resolve, to step out, move on.

When they come for me – and they will --
there won’t be all the noise and bustle
we associate with such things, no sirens
or flashing lights, or squealing tires …
they’ll pull up slowly, first one car then
another, enough; they’ll sit for a moment
consulting files, talking, quietly planning
their approach, two to the front door and
one along the side yard to watch the back,
as if I would light out the back door and
over the back fence, off to a life as fugitive,
a suspect on the loose, my picture on
the evening news, last seen running through
the neighbor’s yard, being chased by their
chihuahua, the voice over would continue on
to say that the fugitive is considered unarmed
and harmless, but instead I’ll answer the door
and let them in and will tell them what they
want to know, not resist or light out for them
territories ahead of the rest. It’s easy to imagine
my neighbors watching my perp-walk and saying
they were always sure they come for me, and
evidently they got their man.

​

​and sometimes they go on too long, so long that
the point of it all is lost in a haze, and all the people,
the original people you invited, you wanted to be there,
have left and you are surrounded by some background
characters you barely care to know, and all the rooms
fill up with words, too much of too many things, smoke,
spilled drinks, and voices so loud that they have become
a symptom, something the neighbors will complain about
tomorrow, if they don’t call the police tonight, like so many
times before, but you have lost control of this, like too many
other things in your life, and so you just let it go on, watch
it play out, too tired to join in or stop it, it’s what parties
become when they go on so long you forget why they are.

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives in-between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he once swiped a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously appeared in such fine little mags as PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Poetry London, and The California Quarterly.

​Lazy leopards are a reality here, make book on it,
but they have nothing to do with extinguishable statements.
(That’s right, extinguishable statements, you didn’t hear it wrong:
they’re utterances excited and heated enough
for the speaker to get doused by your fireman husband,
pompous he of the neighborhood volunteers.)
But again, it’s the leopards that are the reality here,
and it’s in nothing save their grudging leaps
that these laid-back cats present a proof
that the trunks and branches they brush against
get hot enough to glow for days on end.  

​I’ll tell you straight, I don’t think anyone’s going to be fooled by your trying to pass small, flat, circular stones as coins or tokens through the slots of Philadelphia. Oh if I ponder it a tad more, I’ll likely grant that when and if you paint ‘em silver, you’ll have no trouble getting them taken in change by someone in person, someone like wife number one. She was always talking down and into her headlights, always calling me Stoney, and often, often claiming I stayed alive just to now and again deposit and/or smash into the coinboxes of several laundromats off Roosevelt Boulevard. (Sure you do—of course you do—you know the ones: the tumblers and dryers that are cattycorner to the old Good and Plenty plant that still dominates Germantown Avenue).

​Eating creamed corn mucho awkwardly from the can
and with a teaspoon at the steering wheel, as my Volvo
(with some prodding from the corgis on my right)
noses once more toward Pennsylvania as well as Sweden--
so now’s the time I choose to demand you reach over
the front seat and give me my hand back and stitch up
the bleeding stump-of-a-wrist. You’re also going to have
to lose the sickle before we greet my mom and dad
on the slope of their Scranton driveway and then walk
arm-in-arm (with the mutts on leash) and go inside
to chomp on scones and pickled sundries, and it’s later on
we’ll all line up and then on the twitch of my shoulder,
we’ll stomp floorboards in the hallway and the bedroom.

​Within a grove—that is, somewhat near the center of a square of tall trees—you don’t have to shout for heavily-muscled laborers to lay down their jackhammers for a moment or two so you can verify the sound of blue jays nearby, several blue jays daring a single flicker to keep pecking at a pack of melba toast till only the cellophane wrapper remains to blow away in the breeze: O you don’t have to shout, I’ll back you up, I’ll vouch for you, I swear on my mother’s grave I will. You don’t have to reek of failure and stink of shame just because in your haste to hop in the front seat and speed off with me in a shiny coupe, you’ve left embassy documents on top of the low brick wall that encloses your ambassador’s patio.

​She told me we’d be able to play cribbage and stinkfinger
in the breeze of the warm east wind, that the green light
from Chinese lanterns strung about the porch
would be sufficient for us to see our cards, move our pegs,
and discern the glisten from off our hands, while the smell
of burning macaroni would continue to interlace
with the essence of chalk and perfume, each aroma
defending its own identity throughout the night. I bought
into her vision as soon as I heard it—I fell in line
and tramped the hell along—and I stacked my coins
in front of me more than once in good faith. Even with
a storm that kept dousing the lights, we played till morning
got here, till the gray clouds pulled apart to nothingness,
and my quarters and dimes had fallen off the table
and rolled every which way across the floor.

​Giselle Marks is an English writer, poet and novelist, born in London, who has been writing most of her life. Currently Giselle lives in the beautiful Isle of Man. Her family is grown, contented and expanding. She spends most of her time writing.
Her historical romances ‘The Fencing Master’s Daughter,’ ‘The Purchased Peer’ and ‘The Marquis’ Mistake’ have been receiving good reviews. ‘A Compromised Rake’ is recently released; it is a light Regency romance. A Regency ‘Gypsy Countess’ series is planned with the first draft of book one already written.
Together with her fellow writer and cover artist Sarah J. Waldock, Giselle wrote and illustrated ‘Fae Tales’ an anthology of fae and mythic tales updated to modern times and intended for teenagers and adults. All three books are available from Amazon. The ‘Princess of Zenina,’ and ‘Heroine of Zenina’ are the first two books in the sci-fi / fantasy Zeninan Saga will soon be followed by ‘Champion of Zenina’. Other long- term projects include a possible book of her poetry. Her poems have been published in Female First and she has entered two of their contests, scoring a win and a commendation. Within the Isle of Man her poetry has been included in the local Lit Fest poetry trail 2016 and in a number of ’Manx Reflections’ a local poetry anthology. Giselle has had short stories and a novella published in anthologies.
Books currently available
Fae Tales
The Fencing Master’s Daughter
The Marquis’ Mistake
The Purchased Peer
A Compromised Rake
Princess of Zenina.
Heroine of Zenina
Web site - http://ginafiserova.wix.com/gisellemarks
@GiselleMarks1
[email protected]
 

​Heart beat pounding,
Hope confounding,
All life praising,
Pulse blazing,
Eternal.
 
Gasping, disbelieving,
Ideas conceiving,
Higher rising,
Soaring, flying,
Perfection.
 
Submission or sacrifice,
Mutual choice,
Strive for more,
Raptures pour,
Together.
 
Eyes tight connect,
No misdirect,
Chain and link,
Don’t stop to think,
Solution.
 

​You must capture the moonlight in a jar
Time will let you travel and take you far
Bespell the air, the wind and the water
Within the night you will trap the moon’s light.
 
On a windless night to a shiny sea
Chanting your raptures with radiancy
Turn the moon beam into a luscious flow
Hold it so tightly so it cannot go.
 
Store it carefully where it can’t escape
Carry it outside with dignified grace
Pour it over sanctified hands so thin
Let it sink deeply down within your skin.
 
Move inside the dark and let liquid glow
Reach into nature’s beauty as you go
Heal sickness, destroy decay, create life
Excise the evil with the moonlight knife.
 

​Do not ask fairies questions,
Do not ask.
Danger abounds,
time slows down
Do not ask!
 
Do not ask fairies questions
Do not ask.
Sudden changes,
people vanish
Do not ask!
 
Do not ask fairies questions
Do not ask.
Times flashes on,
years gone
Do not ask!
 
Do not ask fairies questions
Do not ask.
No reply
People may die
Do not ask!
 
Do not ask fairies questions
Do not ask.
Good luck given,
thank them but
Do not ask!
 
Do not ask fairies questions
Do not ask.
A human child,
snatched!
Do not ask!
 
 

​I have come to the sad conclusion,
I must hereby honestly confess,
I fear it is no mystic delusion
but it’s hard to be a poetess.
Now I know I can’t be compared
With The Poetess, Sappho of yore,
but please this needs to be shared
so let me tell you some more,
Now Sappho was very unlucky
Jealous men chose to burn her odes
I have no intention to get mucky
As Sappho walked alternate roads.
 
Poets need stratagems in today’s age
if they hope to ever make a splash.
Not just special words upon a page
when they want to grab some cash.
So carefully polish your erudite verse
if you must, but learn to talk the talk.
Kitsch is the key for better or worse,
Pose provocatively, do a funny walk.
Wear dreads, never comb your hair
Describe how you followed your muse
Your poems are good? People don’t care,
without glitz and showmanship you’ll lose!
 
Poetry don’t sell they will tell you
but if you make enough fuss
you might find fame will accrue
if you say fuck a lot and cuss.
If you’re white and have no accent
Of an ethnically interesting shore
Then hours of writing time spent
are nothing without gimmicks galore.
But if you can join the gravy train
of grants, then pundits will acclaim
that you as modern bard do reign.
So flaunt yourself, have no shame.
That is how you play the poetry game!
 

​Night falls fast as wild woods awake
wrapping tightly a lonely soul
listening lost to sounds unexplained.
Fears fester as blindness presses in.
Scratching, scuffling noises nearby,
percussive imaginings unfurl.
Fragrant scents smother sensation
sweet yet cloying tastes redolent
of death and nature uncontrolled.
Blackening dark unsettles more
confusing direction with distance
Blundering through webs and thickets
Stumbling, heartbeat thundering
Terror trembling struggle with thought.
Stop! Take comfort the precious moon
Glints through the canopy of leaves
and guides his footsteps on to home.  

Jennifer Cherry teaches first year composition and literature at a Midwestern community college. Her work has been published in The Storyteller Magazine, Mused, r.kv.ry quarterly literary journal, Mom Writers Literary Magazine, Tipton Poetry Review, and Haiku Journal.

​I watch the bubbles rise then pop
on the top of the pancake --
edges of golden batter sizzle
in hot bacon grease. I learned
this trick from you,
the secret to the crispy-edged
buckwheat pancakes you used to make
 
before the MS,
before your hands became too weak
to wield plastic measuring cups
hold glass mixing bowls
grasp metal spatulas.
 
I have your buckwheat recipe
written down somewhere --
on a torn gas company envelope?
Or maybe tucked between pages
of your Good Housekeeping cookbook
with oil splatters across the faded blue cover,
 
along with your favorite wine-jello recipe,
found in a Christmas issue of Ladies Home Journal --
you took it to the varsity football banquet
unaware you were serving minors
jello shots
before they were called jello shots,
but really, no one cared back then.
 
I turn the pancake over,
admire the dark brown, not burnt, crispy edge,
inhale the teasing warmth of vanilla.
I feel the crunch between my teeth,
against my tongue
taste the savory chased by sweet,
though I have yet to take a bite.

​Lime green tape wrapping
the handlebars shows
black chain grease smears
no amount of hot soapy water can loosen.

I worry over the smudges marring
the once pristine color

and want what was before

the miles of gray road stretching long
into the distance, no clear markings
to ease my need
to know what waits
at the horizon,
 
the misery of ascending
until thin air brews protesting wheezes
within my aching lungs.

Before has vanished
 
with Lachesis' whim turning the crank,
grinding away minutes, hours, days
beneath the tires,

their soft murmurs against pavement
calming worries
with whispered promises --
 
one day

one day

the black smears will have meant nothing.

Some days
mind body bike
coalesce   
        an iridescent bubble
unfettered
                               floating
                                               through spaces
maybe redwoods or
foggy coastal beaches or
valleys snuggled
 
under strawberry fields
where migrant workers hunch,
fingers snatch
         ripe red berries
strains              of bandola music         serenade.

​When you came into my life,
My worries ran scared.
You soothed away my cares
And calmed my haunting fears.
 
Our hearts are intertwined
Like fingers hidden in a glove.
Nothing can break passion’s grip
Nor threaten our earnest love.
 
I’m now lost inside of your love,
Never to be found by another’s eye,
Never to be caressed by another’s lips,
Never to be held by another’s lie.
 
We face each day with joy,
Knowing our love will conquer all.
We walk each mile in peace,
Though bitter may be the gall.
 
And when death shall close my eyes,
And I your face no more behold,
We’ll awaken in eternity together
And walk on streets of gold.

​While walking in the valley
With darkness all about,
I only see the mountain’s
Steep sides and ragged peaks.
 
This valley, oh so deep--
The walls grasp for heaven.
The mountain’s peaks, oh so high--
No tops my lonely eyes can peak.
 
But, alas, not in but through
This valley I traverse--
A Hand guides me gently through
And over the formidable mass.
 
Then, a different perspective
Overtakes me and my foe;
It becomes a thing of beauty--
What was once a burden so fair.
 
Sunshine brightens my path,
Shades of light begin to dawn,
And I stand on the peak of eternity
Crying “How Great Thou Art!”

​I watched the butterfly
Emerge from its shell of change,
I wondered at the metamorphosis--
Once a caterpillar, now like a bird in the sky.
 
I gazed upon each maneuver it made,
Fluttering gently in the morning breeze.
Like the restlessness of one driven by a dream,
It flew from flower to tree, from flower to tree.
 
Upon its wings the sun cast its rays,
Enhancing the beauty once hidden from view.
The wind carried it tranquilly along
Like the gentle flowing melody of a song.
 
Void of all care and concern,
It glided slowly through each day--
No worries or troubles afflict its soul,
No heartaches carried to the grave.
 
Happiness was embedded upon its face,
A song played by the stroke of each wing.
No prettier sight could I ever behold
As beauty seeped from its every pore.  
 
Until he gazed upon the man
Who often lied and stole and harmed his kind.
He saw so little kindness and peace--
though bound it was in his heart.
 
Then wished he to return to his cocoon
Where peace and joy and love abode,
But chose instead to spread his wings of beauty and love
And drop it on the ugliness below.

Liezel Graham lives in Scotland with her husband and son. She writes poetry about loss, grief, mental health, postnatal depression, bulimia recovery and recovery from a chaotic childhood. The heart of her poetry is about the ‘beauty in the struggle’. Some of her favourite themes are nature, trees and birds — drawing inspiration from the beautiful woodlands that she loves to explore. Caffeine gives her superpowers and silence is her oxygen. More of her work can be found at www.liezelgraham.com and Facebook Liezel Graham.

​I stood before
you,
holding my fears in
cupped hands;
a petition
for mercy.
And still,
you would not cross 
the naked divide
between me,
and 
you.
And so I walked 
away.

​Things I teach my son:
To honour his sadness
when it settles in his
bones. 
To know the value of his tears. 
To always give words to the rain in his heart. 
This, 
is my gift 
to the one who will 
love him 
one day.

​How was I to know,
that the thing that brought
winter
to my bones,
would also fill my
brokenness with
strength.
And now,
here I stand.
Strong.

​I am naked.
soul stripped bare;
from learning how to
love every part of 
me.
It is a 
fierce 
undoing
of (their) words.

​Something there is
That does not love a bungalow
The mournful fact of managing
Only the one floor from now on
The cold carpets and damp smell
Of must – from never putting on the rads
The sterile emptiness and long silence
Of the clock-ticking front room
The damp skirting boards where the bank
Rolls the rainfall down towards the walls
In winter, spring or fall
Something there is that fills with fears
At a home so squat and near the ground
Like the little villages seen upon a hill in South America
So beautiful, garlanded and bedecked
Yet disappointing on approach
Because so Lilliputian, small
False as a fronted film set
Empty as the mini archways, steeples and domes
That reveal themselves to be so many tombs
O give me always the second floor
The window for the peeping sun at dawn
The stairs to climb in hope
Descend each morn
Leave bungalows for empires and the Raj
Not English villages and shrubs
With tottering lonely ladies in garden gloves
Who watch from windows lonely as the rain
And wait to shuffle off away from pain.

​Who knows why one day
Swerving by chance into a lonely cul-de-sac
Of sugar-cane and dried up river-bed
The stomach draws down your heavy heart?
 
Or pausing in the seraph-wind of midnight
Beneath the stars behind the turquoise Eucalypts
An empty rush of bats’ wings carries off your soul?
 
Black and dark are the hills of Spain
Electric burns the air
Where screams were stopped in the common pits
Of mass graves dug upon a whim of hate.
 
They left their doleful sighs of despair and grief
To whisper in the arid reeds
While brave tight-lipped relatives agreed
To move on.
 
Now the clean soul of a new generation
Scrambles its nails in the harsh dust
And the remnants of ageing grandfathers
Scowl bitterly as the land gives back its past
 
Here is a place of unfledged sorrow.
Only the hot vibrations of a silent day
Leave you confused – make you want to run away.

​We'll walk once more through Hardwick Wood
Where the ice-age maid and her wight once stood
Along the Mere Way by you I'll be led
Surveying the bluebells that now lie abed

We'll pause to a backdrop of rolling gold corn
And remember our children at play on your lawn
So wide is the sky as we fade slowly away
And we'll talk of it all; say: back-in-the-day!

The ponies will come to your handful of grass
You'll tell me you laugh when you look in the glass
And we shan't think of frailty and heavenly sway
With a spring in our step as we walk the Mere Way.

​Along the tunneled green path
Long and straight as a die
We chatter and stride
Into the ancient ice-age wood
As the Chiff Chaff sings
And the bluebells lie green and dying

See there on the ground
Feathers ravaged by sparrowhawk
Or Fox.  And here is the ancient dyke
Where stone-age man dwelt

Through the gate and suddenly, the sky.
A field of corn, ripe and fullsomely breathing
Away the curves, out to the horizon
Golden, elemental, undulation.

Here we stand.  I, strong as the day
And you, shrunken and battered.
But your spirit strides forward,
Taking us through the space we have deserted

Come, you say.  Look.  Breathe.  Follow
I will show you the riches of this flat land
And her ancient byeways
Let us walk tall for our remaining days
And face our failing futures head-on.
Though my vessel is weakened
My spirit was always strong
And steadfastly, I can show you
The way that we can go on.

I like to write of indigo mornings
the old castle stone-grey against the sky
at the turning of the peninsula
now the faithful gather to remember
 the church bell- tower silent and stranded,
the squire's portico’d verandah empty
instead I stand on the shore looking out
Far and far filled with fears that I may cease,
I see the air lit up in a white flash
and wait the windrush on the bombed out spit
of night time sortees,  sinister search lights,
Moments of terror Fused by cowardice
 We are the runway to their greed and plans.
My mind is seething, full of scorpions
and will not settle, for I see the past 
All deserted and alone, testament
To good thoughts, crumbled by dark treachery
Old radios silent. Don't turn them on
Curl you aching bones away from it all
Sink down to the shore, the indigo sky
Try, and float to another dimension.

13/11/2016
remembrance Sunday
Woke to Nigel Farage shaking Trump's hand

The myst’ry hides out in the bay
A bell tolls underneath the sand
An ancient figure turns away
The falcon cries in distant lands
 
A bell tolls underneath the sand
The blackened wreck sinks to the shore
The falcon cries in distant lands
The island sails forever more
 
The blackened wreck sinks to the shore
You cannot see beneath the waves
The island sails forever more
This is the thing your dead soul craves
 
You cannot see beneath the waves
An ancient figure turns away
This is the thing your dead soul craves
The myst’ry lies out in the bay.
 

23/05/2016
Walking in the sweet May time, the tide far far away