February 2008
VOL XVI, Issue 2, Number 178
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Heather Ferguson
European Editor: Mois Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter
Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena
ISSN 1480-6401
INTRODUCTION
Maria Jacketti
Iced
CONTENTS
Lynn Strongin
Geography in a geode
David Fraser
Conversation
The Hero He Never Had
Conversation
To Aging Sons and Fathers
Conversation
Conversation
Distances
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Grieving
Rishi Pratim Mukherjee.
PANGS
HUNGERFORD STREET
DYING FALL
THE DEATH-WISH
Michael H. Brownstein
A DRINK OF WATER WITH MY WIFE
A HARVEST OF CROSSES
ERRANDS AND OTHER THINGS OCCUPY MY TIME
Fariel Shafee
Serenity
The Kaleidoscope
To Peace
Rachel Chan Suet Kay
Germinal
Camaraderie
Conquistadors Kill the Vultures
Adam Tod Leverton
The Idea of a Smile
Like a Sunset
Autoportret
POST SCRIPTUM
Klaus Gerken
Winter Walk Down Gladstone Avenue
Maria Jacketti
Iced
~~~~
Hazleton, 2007
This August winter came to us
in four tornadoes that never actually
touched down
but opened fire with hail,
shredded the backyard to coleslaw
only the most stubborn peppers
and tomatoes
commando blossoms
endured
an hour later
white gases rising
instantaneous snow-folk
in terminal heat
I walked through the steam
with my daughter,
gathering vegetal cadavers
raking
floral ghosts
their memory now
brief to evaporate
green-blooded perfume
oh when
winter wakes in August,
and ice balls fall
from weaponized space
the Earth speaks in
storms
reinventing mother
again of saber-tooth
meteorology
Wed 19/09/07 8:10 PM
Lynn Strongin
Geography in a geode
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The South is a secret wedged inside its lodging like a possum in his barn
underneath a western rib sun setting, cowgirl hatless: cashroll in pocket:
stark as cliff face young bone:
a fall from which I cannot save myself
Gilana Tamara
morphine always comes
cold as szylocaine.
On the West Side
everything was brown: velvet or stone box or can-opener:
clutching a box of flowers riding past fire escapes, boxes of blood-red geraniums
a sister, taking the creaky shifty lift up to which she can picture the ropes, chains
box in which a dog once bit her hand & it had to be cauterized with silver nitrate:
Past carpeted landings
The inebbriation of tissue-rattling boxes
the sheer morphine of a dress rehearsal
her name on the marquee already forming in dots on her brain screen.
Perhaps in the future hangs a wedding gown
borrowed finery
but now she is dressed in winter brown:
the ribbon round the box quite soon
turns to surgical stitches in the skin which will never be undone.
ward to become world, encapsulated, soon. Quite soon. Before she quits the morning.
Residue
takes up residence in collections: stamps pelling like flesh from albums
photographs more beautiful in the skin than the real thing: matcbooks &
buttons, paperclips pastel postits clipped to cancelled checks each a map of financial surfacing or shipwreck:
hatpins which could stab a doll to daeth. Doll, hold your breath, you are bleeding and nobody knows.
Miniature objects a paper rose & a faded real rose petal inside a posie.
But this is Lilluput after all: our northern evening, spirits heading south drive the needle further up:
we forget where things are put.
Icicles coat
twigs radiating. Beautiful but treacherous. A photogrpah in dawn. Mouse Residue
takes up residence in collections: stamps pelling like flesh from albums
photographs more beautiful in the skin than the real thing: matcbooks &
buttons, paperclips pastel postits clipped to cancelled checks each a map of financial surfacing or shipwreck:
hatpins which could stab a doll to daeth. Doll, hold your breath, you are bleeding and nobody knows.
Miniature objects a paper rose & a faded real rose petal inside a posie.
But this is Lilluput after all: our northern evening, spirits heading south drive the needle further up:
we forget where things are put.
Icicles coat
twigs radiating. Beautiful but treacherous. A photogrpah in dawn. Mouse fails to clutch the cursor. Home is filled with sailor's curses.
Frost has outlined world making the drive to Rutland out of the question.
You turned yourself inside-out like a glove for love
but that was this morning.
One tires of the vast: miniatures, even
close-ups could heal. One grows fatigued from
lifting & putting down metal spoons in their precise spot in the silvertray; one wearies of
a secret kept deep inside one
a fall from which one cannot save oneself:
The surgery itself was not bad yet healed nothing;
followup problems arose:
Residue
takes up residence in collections: stamps pelling like flesh from albums
photographs more beautiful in the skin than the real thing: matcbooks &
buttons, paperclips pastel postits clipped to cancelled checks each a map of financial surfacing or shipwreck:
hatpins which could stab a doll to daeth. Doll, hold your breath, you are bleeding and nobody knows.
Miniature objects a paper rose & a faded real rose petal inside a posie.
But this is Lilluput after all: our northern evening, spirits heading south drive the needle further up:
we forget where things are put.
Icicles coat
twigs radiating. Beautiful but treacherous. A photogrpah in dawn. Mouse fails to clutch the cursor. Home is filled with sailor's curses.
Frost has outlined world making the drive to Rutland out of the question.
You turned yourself inside-out like a glove for love
but that was this morning.
One tires of the vast: miniatures, even
close-ups could heal. One grows fatigued from
lifting & putting down metal spoons in their precise spot in the silvertray; one wearies of
a secret kept deep inside one
a fall from which one cannot save oneself:
The surgery itself was not bad yet healed nothing;
followup problems arose:
angry angels: this wasn't the end of the wardonly of the world.
Now another issue unfolded like a legal indictuments:
knuckles coming, white-knuckling it, river-rafting
Wearing our renewed friendship like a wedding ring
I hear the door to the bathrrom squeak a neighing horse, the sawhorse, the clothes rack corroding: Everything looms like umbre wax: threatening.
Sirens rise up from streets, like stricken children climbing from a burning brownstone.
Whom out there to trust? Anyone?
I dig my nails in but there is blood on the tracks rust in the ruin
of cathedrals insides of radios: the vast, the miscroscpic:
the rim, the overhelming residue of everything.
You have written me another letter I see
good they are always revelatory:
Circles emerge lik a Persian rug in a brown room
year's iciest night
inkbloom
soon
warming only the tip of the hands
where cold
slips on a mitten the ear registers monotone: the photographic eye cream tone; snow like the ocean is rising, falling, folding frozen linen
the ice its iron: Now all is silent, satin: the parishioners come in
casting the long shadow
of their inner history:
they lean to listen, souls like saints in sarcophagi, yet above ground.
white to the inner bone.
David Fraser
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Your arms that flung me in the air flying as a baby full of excited fear were
the arms that held the kettle with that boiling water in told tales before
the memory, as I, an impulsive child swing the door as you enter on the other
side as water streams a fire upon my head.
Those arms that held the two fingers that hammered upon my wrist to stop the
crying embarrassment on a bus. For years I'd thought those two blood-red
islands on my wrist were birthmarks, but were not. Time spent feeling like
the tiny sparrow fallen from the nest above the eaves where broken-winged
hed lay waiting at our door to be picked up and carried to a small cage my
mother kept for nursing birds back to health, with eyedroppers of warm milk,
soft fingers on the feathers and a bit of time.
The Hero He Never Had
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That kid lacing up his skates
beside the cold raw pond
legs wobbly with his first attempts,
a hero's phantom hand
supporting his awkward strides,
that arm around the shoulder
sort of feel imagined only in his dreams,
that older piece of guidance
brimming with integrity and time
to listen to some idle thoughts,
cosmic questions full of wonder and the stars.
That kid tracing back his steps
finds an uncle with handle bars
to ride upon, that person who
could show him tracks of animals in snow,
teach him how to swim,
shout his name to the rafters of the rink
when he scored a goal
or wrestled in the corner for the puck,
then later, much later, man to man
drinking beer
firelight on faces,
darkness from the forest all around
they can work out the pain
of love and loss together
until that kid is sane again.
Little bits accumulated over time,
not the body that he could touch
but fragments sewn together
to make the hero that he never had.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some things come about that were not the product of a hunger forged in
violence, fueled by frustration, my adversarial stubbornness to play it to
the extreme; those things emerging on some distant Saturday morning where we
picked out a bamboo fishing rod, or a half set of golf clubs, an early
birthday gift so summer wouldn't waste away waiting, or a tennis racket when
I barely understood the game, but had fallen in love with its ballet. All
that hockey stuff you and mom could ill afford for me to trudge down to the
rink at six am to play at chasing pucks in a hive swarm across the ice. There
are all those gifts that took me toward adventures while you worked or were
too tired and wrapped napping on a Sunday afternoon.
To Aging Sons and Fathers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How did so many lose their fathers
on the way to where their fathers are?
How did they lose us as they aged?
So many sons and fathers trapped in a time
caught in the cycle of the work
to earn, provide, place the bread
upon the Arborite, repair the roof,
toiling through the week for weekends
to catch up on repairs;
such lack of time, evening's exhaustion
etched on faces hungry for some sleep
shifts so out of sync with sons,
the filling of the roles so placed on them
to deal out discipline for incidents
so far removed and needing punishment,
corporal justice for sons so sensitive
they held their compliance at a cost,
a seething in deep reservoirs
a darkness where relationships are lost.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you remember early on in the west end of Toronto, when you drove the milk
truck and one Saturday you asked me along, half day to deliver, half day to
collect from all those who hadn't paid. You showed me the microcosm of the
world, the early morning up the limestone walkways to the houses of the rich,
then the back alley staircases of shabby flats full of arguments without the
money to pay for milk. Remember chewing sandwiches later with a soft drink
from a garage cooler, sitting in the truck jawing with mechanics dressed in
greasy laughing smiles. We fit somewhere in between all this delivered milk
to dainty homes and disheveled shacks across the tracks. I saw it all, how
you were a man of brawn who could drive and haul stuff around the world, who
never thought about how you could make it easier for yourself like your
brothers could, who owned their land, played golf at country clubs. You
always toughed it out, hung on for some brief reward; those sunny days you
lawn bowled for trophies at club championships or sat for lunch at picnic
tables beside the road, where the new used Chevy shone.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Britain how we walked and walked the paths along the Thames, or through
the oak forests of Richmond Park, for walking didn't cost much; the air and
sunshine had no admission tied to them. We trundled through those years in a
certain practical happiness with what was life, suffering the cold damp of
winter waiting for a double-decker bus, home from Sunday visiting. There
wasn't much of rain but many puddles in my mind on walks to school, another
private world which I never really shared, but I saw your glowing face
stoking fires for the tires at Firestone.
Distances
~~~~~~~~~
In hollow silences,
waiting moments,
distances appear.
In layered memories,
collected photos,
I carve my heart's despair
for the missingness of time,
the space between the molecules of care.
Within the hungry aching
muscles clenched around my heart
distances appear.
in wounded emptiness,
wordless shuffling sounds,
I scribe my scarsoutcry
for the times of missing tears,
the gaps between the fragments of our lives.
In unspoken thoughts
sons and distant fathers dwell.
Chasms have appeared
in memories
left hunting for balance in my heart
for closing up that space
before distances are too great.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nothing is ever simple in a predatory world; you had to tame the garden with
its waist-high grass gone to seed, full of the webs of huge black and yellow
spiders. A dead snake lying limp across your shovel seemed so natural, out of
scripture yet so full of horror that I should have known. The afternoon I
watched you climb the ladder to the eaves, thought you would move the
starlings nest to another place, then saw your beefy hand clutch baby birds
one by one, and swat them with the back of your familiar other hand; or in
the basement when you crept around an octopus of furnace ducts, low-ceilings,
rough dark wood, and chased a bat trapped and searching for the wide
expansive sky and I was there powerless to catch its terror-stricken furry
body beating wings against the incandescent light as you thwacked with broom
and caught its tiny form against the white-washed wall, listened to the
smallness of its screams and watched the rivulets of blood run down the wall
onto a trunk that once bent across Id felt the anger unleashed on smaller
things, where I internalized that bestial energy and harboured thoughts that
once could have festered into death. Nothing is ever simple, not even in the
telling.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
How could you not remember this? I see my dog ruffled roughly round his neck
back and forth by your strong hands, until he snaps his jaws upon your hand.
But thats not all; the rising up of that anger; its explosion in the kitchen,
the heavy steel-chromed chair rising high above your head, up and down, up
and down across the poor dog's skull; his eyes wide in horror slipping as his
legs buckle with the blows, his pee streaming uncontrolled across the floor.
But much time and distance mellow out this intensity, dull the memory a bit
and then one day you tell me a story that the other week while cutting grass
riding on your mower, you find a dead crow lying on your path and in seconds
a live crow descends and places himself between the mower and his mate. I
remember waiting, pausing your story, mind racing to see the dead bird lifted
up, the live one flown away, but no; your mower is relentless and even though
you in the telling shoo, shoo, shoo, you keep the throttle wide and mow them
down; feathers, hollow bones, a little bit of blood mingled with the grass. I
knew that day no matter what could happen forever and ever in this world, I
couldn't trust; I couldn't trust you ever to be more than what you are.
Conversation
~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I look back into our relationship, I see we were forced into the deep end
before treading water confidence arrived. Not many pictures really of you,
mostly posed; your chubby baby picture ironically more like girl, a baseball
team shot, your recognizable face in a sea of ragged souls beside a schools
front steps. Not many of you and mom together, proof of the joining that is
me. When I enter into a more interior landscape, I wonder how I am who I am,
speculate on being found wailing beneath a prickly bush, carried home to
become this stubborn, rebellious child who maybe locked you out as much as
you kept to yourself and toil and never had the sincere time to free yourself
and embrace my world. This always living in the deep end of the pond kept us
both so vulnerable, so distanced that our splashes and our cries never
reached the other all these years. It takes these final moments for the water
to be calm, for silences, some sense of touch still a barrier, a thin bed
sheet between our two hands; some touch and a flicker of the eyes, mouth wide
open as if what is all of you has just escaped.
Grieving
~~~~~~~~
Grieving creeps in unannounced
ahead of time like sad
blues harp players' songs,
wet, dull throbbing rain
taps on the roof;
minds locked up
with parts malfunctioning,
this silent slow demise;
father dying now
serviced by the state;
mother so relieved,
released from frustrated
mothering, too weary
for the humouring of
waiting hand and foot
on a reluctant mind.
So when the moment comes
the music of the song is numb,
the grieving has been done.
Rishi Pratim Mukherjee.
PANGS
~~~~~
1.
"Have you ever seen a dry leaf,dead,
Amber,crunchy to the touch,in
lds of devouring flames?
Lapping it up,licking it forth,
Within and without,working its infernal tongue?
A fatal embrace,crackling and electric
Subsuming its veins;that once had life
With another life,a life lived immolating to final nullity.
O yes,the fire has a forked tongue,
Hissing,smouldering,caressing,inviting.
Like a forbidden touch to a forbidden place,
A tenor of waves up the spine,
Up to the brain boiling in its liquids,
Passing through to scalding flesh.
Flesh.Flesh that reverberates,quivers,
Tongue,flesh,touch,lustily pure,absolute
Defiled by nothing,all feeling and
Sensation.
The withering,moaning leaf
In the arms of its nemesis,ripped apart,
Exhumed,exhausted,ravished,ravaged.
"O it is nothing",you smile and say----
"A forest fire in the Andes;a common geographical occurence".
Ask the devastated vegetation,going
Up in so much spiritual smoke."
2.
The parched earth painfully awaits,
Scarred about with cracks and fissures
In arrested stillness : agonizing to the eyes.
Scarcely moving,an infinity of fixity.
Waiting,biding for that one drop
Crystal and luscious to descend from space
Charged with the force of heavens
To fall and scatter its graveyard silence.
Invigorate,Infiltrate the creaking crevices,
The arid torpor pervading the choking stems,
Chunks of clay that have clung together with morbid terror,
With the nectar of life,the element of evanescence.
Rushing through,reviving,replenishing,
Revisiting,resusciating,regenerating.
One drop,a single stellar speck
To remind the earth that it is thirsty,
Oh! so long,so tantalizingly thirsty.
One drop,an infinitesimal dot to set
The wheel in motion,Create,Impregnate.
The labouring earth awaits : a puny sapling,
Grand and green stretches its crumpled shoot."
HUNGERFORD STREET
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The light is red.
Traffic stationary. Purring. Waiting.
Tension mounting. A precipitous moment
Of apprehension. Tension.
A few honks, a blare, here and there.
A tribe of wildebeests muted on the savannah,
Making their way through the grasslands,
To the next water hole.
Wait. In apprehension. Tension.
On the banks of the swamp with quiet breath,
To the dance of hooves and cruel death.
A tussle of horns, here and there,
The irritation of flies in the air,
Wait. To wade across the stream,
Of crocodiles in a gleam,
Playing hide and seek,
And little bo-peep.
A time for fangs and claws,
And wise saws. Apprehension. Tension.
Their leader emits a snort.
The light turns green for the right.
The rest start their engines in a diastole motion,
Smooth.
Like a moisturizing lotion.
The glistening bodies swerve right,
In a screech, like leeches slithering down
A mossy beech.
Like relaxing elastic,
In plastic perfection, the cars strain right.
And the gaping lane swallows them.
In large mouthfuls, gulps and gasps.
Swallows them in
To the last tyre and axle,
The last face peering out the window,
The shopping bags at the back,
The puppy on the lap,
The smiles, cheers, tears and fears,
Of lives lived and deaths doled,
All swallowed, wallowed into the waiting road.
Across the stream, their leader turns back to see
His community. Of what’s left of those eyes keen,
And the what-might-have-been.
(11/01/08.)
DYING FALL
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm an old guitar-
A tuneless invalid,
Broken-stringed,
Moth eaten to the core.
Leaning for decades
Against this destitute column
In this destitute corner.
Kept just for old times’ sake.
Some shoddy memories attached,
And the Sanctity of Music.
Why don't someone just
Chop me up and throw
Me in for firewood?
Instead,
I get ritual dustings
After four score years
When spring-cleaning
Visits the attic.
I have listened to birds' songs,
And the clasps of thunder,
The patter of raindrops,and
Felt the genial rot all around.
Lizards have crept over me,
Spawning in my hollow.
I have withstood the birth of generations.
No anger is directed towards me.
I have no story.
No warm-lit halls for me,
Nor the cheers of performance.
Wine has never trickled down
My polished mien in callous mirth.
No one wrecks me up in anguish.
Returns me to whence I came:
A mass of deadwood.
I hate my artistic cut,
The purpose thrust on me.
I would rather the log
That lies strewn and
Hapless,beating rainfall and sunshine,
Ant-hills and exfoliations,
On the soggy forest floor.
A life before a Life.
THE DEATH-WISH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The dream that slowly rose in soft vapour
Was caught up in the ceiling fan
And amidst 240 rotations per minute
Torn to shreds,descending fluff-like
Back to the cool mosaic.
But phoenix-like,it reforms and rises
Up again for its slow transcendence
From amidst the cluttering furniture
To the rarified air of the night sky above
And again the fatalistic embrace of that swirling killer.
The flickering tube light groans empathy
Do its neons buzz with feeling?
The wheeling terrorist constantly swishes
In its menacing trance; the sole overseer of this little room.
The poor upholstery is crouched dumb in meek obeisance.
And what of that dream,its insatiable attempts?
Its torn shreds,its shards and shrapnels?
O cruelty!Is it to be locked in this constant death role
Of being born to be torn,of being torn to be born?
Let rather tears embalm it with their liquid wreaths and follow its quiet death.
If only once it could soar like Icarus
And bask in the ephemeral ether of freedom
Spreading its wild waxen wings to float in immensity
And greet the new born sun in its eastern baths; just once.
Such that its mortal wings melting,it dashed to the earth in sunlit glory.
Michael H. Brownstein
A DRINK OF WATER WITH MY WIFE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, there is a taste to the word "water"
as there is substance to fire
and weight to strips of leather soaked in oil.
It is possible to smell the word "tar".
See a stream of cologne.
Even "comprehension" has depth.
And so, Deborah, I need to thank you for this seasoning of prayer,
the sparkle of imagined thyme,
the sound of lemon pepper on roasted salmon.
A HARVEST OF CROSSES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We were at St. Mary's
early evening (and I can barely
remember the church at all
nor can I recall the vast graveyard
laid out against a tight tree line
of Northern Pine,
the stone road dividing it, or the creek
of funeral flowers and
discarded funeral wreaths.)
We were at St. Mary's
early evening and our motel overlooked
a tundra flatness with purple
flax in perfect rows like sunlit
waves and sand lines lifting to forever.
Nothing was on TV that far north,
but my oldest daughter pregnant
with her first born son
found a radio station and fell asleep
in a chair to its music.
We were at St. Mary's
early evening and a few stores
were still open and well lit.
Parking was not a problem.
No one spoke to us.
We were from someplace else and we
were someplace else.
We arrived at St. Mary's
(but I only see lines of crosses
and funeral flowers with plastic wreathes
piled into a mess in the creek
behind the graveyard not far from our motel,
not far from the stone road either,
but quite a distance from where we
parked our car to finish
one evening's shopping.)
ERRANDS AND OTHER THINGS OCCUPY MY TIME
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
and now I look through my list of poems,
a silence so concise it swells into me.
Is there no room for hunger or shame,
the loose breath of the injured fawn
leaning terribly against the injured oak,
its new buds wet with the last blossoms of snow?
Somewhere children are flying kites. It is spring.
Somewhere children are flying kites. It is fall.
The homeless man from the corner tells me
water is the hardest thing to find in the city.
"Can you spare fifty cents? I need a can of cola."
His teeth are like mine, coated and spoiled.
I give him a quarter and he buys a bag of chips.
Fariel Shafee
Serenity
~~~~~~~~
Gravels and damp sand -
motes of planet earth
and fragments of the
soil,
slowly slither
beneath my feet
as columns of tide surge,
to scatter into foam
-reclaimed by the ocean
before they
reach the azure above.
I sense the moist chill
on my open cheek and neck
-- the humid wind hurls
and struggles to re-shape the scape of the shore
that's as fickle as the thoughts
of an
innocent
malleable
child.
My bare unprotected feet
sunken into the sand,
- slowly being deluged by the
watery salty body
of serenity
and of greatness
and of hope.
I FEEL the pulse of the universe
and float on nature's vibe.
The wind encompasses me
touches me
and sculpts me into a fraction
of a
greatness that seems
infinite
instead of leaving me one
tiny
fragile
being.
The Kaleidoscope
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You and I
are standing at
the extreme ends of the
universe
With a pair of dice to roll -
and ignorant
of the other's existence.
My die is rolled
and a number is seen on the
TOP;
so MY rules are made;
the pieces in my
kaleidoscope
move around on the base
and the scarlet, blue,
green and yellow
iridescent fragments of glass
form a pattern that's splendid.
The image gets reflected in the
0mirrors of my scope
a million, a zillion times and more
and tiles to form
an infinite world
that appears definite to me;
so I sense a meaning
and I feel I
matter
as I behold the exact image
extending beyond my sight
and the rest of the world dissolved
behind my impassable walls.
Later when I meet you
you seem to me to have appeared
with a bizarre set of rules
and the idea and the conviction of an
unknown world I can't fathom -
so gripped by threat
I am spooked
and
I
long that you were NEVER EVER
created in this universe
with your VERY FLAWED die,
although it is probable
that you're AS innocent as I am.
Your die might actually have
given you a number
that is co-prime to my own
with no common factors at all.
To Peace
~~~~~~~~
Drenched-
Bruised by the acidic
showering rain
that melts away the outer layer
of
emotions shelved
in the depth of soul.
Inflicted by
a persistent pain
as caused by bitter needles
of ice.
Gazing
blankly at the
corner street
passed by dashing cars that honk
and oblivious silent walkers
Some confused and soaked crows fly by.
Distant roars of the thunder
echo
blend with lasting murmurs
around
The memory of a long lost past
No wars, no blood and no flight for life
Rachel Chan Suet Kay
Germinal
~~~~~~~~
Here the sterile preside.
Out of the order was chaos.
And it leapt and broke you
Out of your silent reverie. Seventeen
inches wide and ten inches long
measured the grieving air.
You worked in distraction. Calendarising
your words. Here and there
droplets leaked from the conversation.
Maybe some of them picked
it up. For they saw you then,
and trembled. With the vermin,
there is a forgiving solidarity.
Camaraderie
~~~~~~~~~~~
And so, this leads to discovery
Of the great meeting room.
Faces from ages spent
Congregate to jest.
The dice is folly,
coated with experiments
that fluked.
Hard earned camaraderie
mask the workings behind.
I ate my memories and
they sunk me down
to earth.
Conquistadors Kill the Vultures
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today we're pimping jazz
to the whores of condescension. The lily
beasts of burden
have come to conquer
and be on top. They don't realise
we Robin Hoods steal back. We smoke their
second hand cigars
and inhale all their
hot air. Then we spread this filth
to the city. We lazy natives.
Who but we? Surely
not the ma'ams
who thank you
after wham-bam.
We're the capital managers
also hooks, line and sinkers.
What you can stamp with sophisticato
-babble we can make here
for a fraction of your wages.
Silly conquistador, you ain't killed the vultures
just yet.
Adam Tod Leverton
The Idea of a Smile
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's the idea of a smile
lurking behind your lips.
Maybe it waits for the spring
the april torrents
strong currents
gulped up by the dirt
to poke it's green spear
up to the light.
Or maybe it's waiting
for my hand on your hip
and a dip into your eyes
Cool like a breeze
off a field covered with snow.
Like a Sunset
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
like a sunset
thrown through the window
the glass lies on the pane
gather it up and
cut your finger tips
my heart is a trip wire
barbed wire high wire
tight rope act
and I, up there blind-folded
teeth chattering and frightful
hope to avoid the last, hopeless
drop.
Autoportret
~~~~~~~~~~~
about six feet in stature
but I stoop so really
it's only about 5 ft 8
my hair currently
is not sticking up at odd angles
which it usually does
it is very short
and impossible to tell
from this angle that I'm balding
as for the colour it is a dull brown
the lightness of the summer departing
as I spend more time indoors
dark blue eyes the colour
of an angry sky in july
a strange small nose
which has been variously described
as English whatever that means
or bird-like, more appro-po
a mouth which is a little small
but not obviously so
ears which are largish, but in proportion
after a day of not shaving
a healthy growth of stuble
a few freckles which may be overlooked
by the less discerning
and I'm wearing a biege t-shirt
that contains a dog
which is forver breaking the injuctions
not to eat, smoke or be a dog
dark blue jeans, silver watch
and black socks.
Klaus Gerken
Winter Walk Down Gladstone Avenue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arcturus looms high
above a swirling infrared sky
long empty midnight street
with only a slight chill for company
and foot prints...a reminder of
earlier activity
Spent condom
where a car had stopped
I approach an old elm
bare branches cast an arachnid shadow
on the snow
this is limbo
no sound penetrates
around this tree
I see a ghost car gliding past
the unreal grips my mind
and binds it to the universe
beyond my comprehension
dark facades across the street
as if a barricade
beyond here is nothing
this is the end of the earth
this is where life stops
farther down
in a doorway a huddled figure
appears whenever something moves
a headlight approaches
I walk past her
eyes meeting briefly
despairing hunger
glazed emptiness
a chill invades my bones
time I tell myself
go home
warm yourself
where winter does not penetrate
and life is not a hollow log
that will not burn
20 September 2007 1:53 A.M.
All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2008 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's
World-Wide Web site http://www.synapse.net/~kgerken. No other
version shall be deemed "authorized" unless downloaded from there.
Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
COMMENTS & SUBMISSIONS
* Klaus Gerken, Chief Editor - for general messages and ASCII text
submissions: kgerken@synapse.net
