“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
“The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
“If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The theme for Wednesday Writing Prompt, awakening on our rockey rebel road, June 6, 2018, was to share with us the poet in non-ordinary reality, the doorways that lead from the physical to the spiritual. This was perhaps not the easiest of prompts but these poets rose to the occasion with depth and panache. Lovely!
Thank you Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pangelov and Anjum Wasim Dar. Bravo!
A warm welcome to poet, writer and educator, Michele Stepto, new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. I included a link below to her book, which looks fascinating. It’s on my reading list.
Enjoy this fine collection with its profound delights and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. Links to each poet’s site are included below so that you can visit, read more of their work, and get to know them.
Fog
She received as a gift a carpet
with fog in it and moved
the furniture and rolled
the carpet out in the middle
of the room and found
that fog was rising out of it
in little wisps
and that when she stood
at the edge of it it
was just like standing at the edge of a cliff
high up over the ocean in the evening
when the fog is coming in
She moved the furniture back
and it did not
fall through the carpet
it did not disappear
she sat down in her old
armchair next to the lamp
and thought
she was floating in mid-air
on a foggy day
or flying a plane in the fog
everything feeling pleasantly
cold and damp as she closed her eyes
She sat there for a long while
dreaming about trees seen in fog
and things coming toward you
out of the fog small birds
who stayed put and didn’t fly in the fog
as she was staying put
now in her chair
their heads tucked
under their wings and dreaming
as she was of paradise
of their own Shambhala
high in the mountains
girdled in fog
or clouds
it hardly
mattered
© 2018, Michele Stepto
MICHELE STEPTO: I have taught literature and writing at Yale University for many years, and recently at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. My work has appeared online at Verse-Virtual, What Rough Beast (at Indolentbooks.com), Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, Mirror Dance, Lacuna Journal, and One Sentence Poems, which nominated “The Unfinished Poem” for a Pushcart Prize this year. Along with my son Gabriel, I translated from the original Spanish Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World.
„Убийството на Марат“, Бодри, (1868)
“Miss Corde was reading Plutarch by night the books then used to be taken seriously” Zbigniew Herbert
(Adam Lux – Meditations)
Miss (or already, why not, Missis)
is reading.
So did she before getting married. The revolution of 1960s All is Love is over.
She used to sleep in tents. Why not?
The freedom has to be defended.
Drums, fires, the screams:
“Down with! Who doesn’t jump is.”
Rumble behind the walls. Marat is. Alive? Death? Used to live?
The time is traveling. The crown’s refined hat.
The hair short. With all the colors.
“In a dress like a blue rock.”
Obelisk? Yes! of passing from
necessity to
necessity (for survival).
Mrs. Corde, is reading. The Game of …
She’s dreaming. “All is love”.
The day is the most usual.
Charlotte?
She administrated justice.
The falling stars are glowing.
Democratic changes in Bulgaria started after the Berlin Wall in 1989 Jean Paul Marat, a prominent French Revolution. Charlotte Conde is his murderer. https://shortprose.blog
© 2018, bogpan [Bozhidar Pangelov] (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)
REALM
Sleep deprivation
May lead to conversation
That you wake up inthemiddleof
Even though it is you who is talking.
The Goddess of Sleeplessness
In that other underworld
Has made you an emissary of her
Realm,
And conferred on you
The demigod’s trick
Of creating monsters.
Taillights
Become eyes…
© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)
A Smooth Skin
is ugly. Trace beauty
in bloody edges of scars.
Tattoo your face and hands
with raw wounds. Glow.
Bruises brighten your looks.
Pimples and spots mark sexiness.
Wrinkles entice awe.
The look is all in scabs.
Containers
do not contain. Vacuum
is packed with it all.
I wish you were more obtuse.
I can’t understand this clarity.
All is tightly enclosed in open space.
All is nebulous.
Please talk in riddles. Plain
Sentences confuse my head.
Exactitude is imprecise.
Clarity is obscurity.
Distance is not a measure.
I need you to be woolly with words.
Only The
incompetent do their jobs properly.
Ensure you are only partly trained.
Half skilled emergency services save lives.
It’s what you don’t know that counts.
Amateurs are the only professionals.
Fully trained and experienced cause accidents.
Complete competency leads to lack of trust.
Once experienced you are useless to society.
Successful people are always trainees.
They are oil in the cogs, ensure smooth running.
Mistakes ensure a job is done thoroughly.
They ensure society is rectified.
Be Promising
There are no promises.
Money does not exist.
Nothing to breach.
No agreements or vows.
One can never be broken.
You can never be on one.
No laws, no lines can’t be crossed.
You promise not to promise.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
This Poem Must Be Taken Literally
My body is a rainbow
My blood is an explosion
My heart is a rusty cage
These are not metaphors
Please take this literally
That cloud is my opinion
That road is an orange
That wish is my house
That burnt toast is my belonging
These are not metaphors
This hand is a metal spade
This foot is a knife edge
This mouth is a dark valley
These words are made of light
This is not a poem
This is the ultimate answer.
This tells you how to live
This tells you the only truth
This Mop And Bucket
are poetry to me.
My pen is a mop
I stick in a bucket
of disinfectant floor cleaner
pull out mop sodden
with words and splash
them backwards and forwards
slop lines one after the other
Until the floor fair shines,
My mop is dry, needs another dip.
I squeeze out the gunk
back into the bucket.
More the floor shines,
dirtier the bucketful gets.
A good poem is a clean floor.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
. reading for anna .
carrying the book, gently,
i find that jesus
is off the wall again.
breeze from the doors
blows him and cobwebbed minds
away,
as i write the small book,
on black keys of words.
gentle here this morning,
sun dreams in,
quiet in all the rooms,
and arms held high,
i come into the morning,
with string and sealing wax.
sbm.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher
.valley of the widow.
grey day, rain.
squeaky bath taps.
this is the valley
of the widow.
this is the day.
writing the wall,
trees stand tall.
yellow flags, the route,
to another place
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher
There Is Someone
There is someone who talks to me
And keeps me waiting-
If only I could see The Spirit
Which I feel close by, yet so far
A bar on thoughts and actions,
I cannot think because my mind is quiet
And not moving or stirring
Lest the sweet words of The Spirit
May not find their way in-
And I may crush the tender layer thin
In between which keeps us bound,
I cannot let go the joy
I have found in my heart
at hearing the mellifluous melody
of the affectionate aura around,
which seeps into my soul to make peace
and washes smoothly away the tears
and the fears so deep,
I can now sleep with ease
For I cannot speak of the
Good Night Prayer
That descends in time so rare
my soul, to repair
And I cannot say that if I wake
Life may be like a snow flake
White and pure and sure, as
The Angels will come to Heaven, take.
© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)
“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
― Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire
The last Wednesday Writing Prompt, May 16, Baruch, The Baker, was about genocide, unfortunately as prevalent in these modern times as any other in history. The count is 24 currently, including – and ironically – Gaza. Here are the sometimes intuitive, sometimes angry, always well-considered works of poets with a strong sense of social justice and injustice. A collection for serious thought.
Thanks to intrepid and talented poets: Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Frank McMahan, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Marta Pombo Sallés. Bravo! And thank you to Sonja and Marta for sharing their illustrative art.
Please join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are encouraged: beginner, emerging or pro. It’s about community, sharing, getting to know poets who may be new to you. Each poet’s site (if they have one) is linked below to facilitate visits. If they don’t have a site, chances are you can connect with them on Facebook or Twitter.
child rulebook
all conquerors
learned all they needed
from the child rulebook.
of course, it being
a CHILD’s rulebook,
some rules contradict others.
“i was here first”
will fall before
“my army can beat up your army.”
“i’m gonna tell on you”
derives from
“you will get it if mom finds out”
but is so often outmatched
by “now look what you made me do”
which is a corollary of
“it’s all your fault.”
the Standard Oil Company,
a conqueror from its inception,
practiced
“kick their ass/get their gas”
long before those words
we’re found on t-shirts.
in 1979
after a puppet government
set up by the US
was deposed,
and hostages were taken
at the American embassy,
Mickey Mouse
appeared on a T-shirt
flipping a bird and saying,
“Hey, Iran!”
now our roost is presided over
seemingly by a turgid towhead
with the impulse control
of an otter
and a sense of entitlement
derived from a lifetime
of always getting
all the toys
he wants.
dark forces pull his strings.
the human population
of Citizens United
is zero,
as is
its regard
for humanity.
© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One with Clay, Image & Text)
Ethnic Cleanser
removes unsightly
grease and dirt of people
who spoil your landscape.
Cleans as it polishes, replaces
their awful smell with fresh fragrances.
their profane beliefs with fresh air.
their noisy children with heavenly quiet.
our history with revised pages.
Preserves our pure culture.
They are an infection to be eradicated.
Their unmarked graves forgotten.
Ethnic cleanser for a cleaner society.
Buy into this great product.
Popularly known as genocide.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
Inhumanity Is Good
Your inhumanity will prove
how human you are.
Neglect one another.
Abuse one another.
Seal each other in homes
until old and weak die.
Run pedestrians down.
Bomb hospitals.
Use the innocent as shields.
Use the knives you carry.
Kill babies, rape mothers.
Prove how human you are.
Defend your inhumanity.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
BERLIN 1933
Find the glass window set in the cobbles
outside Humboldt’s University. You’ll
need to angle your view and wait until
the light reveals the whiteness of the empty
shelves,a void in Europe’s heart.
Judischen, entartate. This is where
they began the burning of the books,
flames and sparks, yellow like stars,lighting the way
to ghettos, wagons, lines of wire, ashes, bones.
Ghosts gather, tug at your sleeve politely,
plead that you read the Book of the Dead.
Its opening page lies at your feet. Descend
to lamentation’s rainbow.
© 2018, Frank McMahan
SHOES
Shoes, pointing in all directions
as if they could not decide which
way to go. Ahead the river,
wide and fast, its shore empty of
boats.And people.The shoes, fissured,
soiled, heels broken; children’s clogs.As
they stood in their final sunlight:
prayers? Huddles of comfort? Piss and
shit leaking onto ancient leather.
Hurled backwards, no funeral flowers
save the smoke curling from the guns,
downwards, where the Duna receives
them, cold, reddening as it flows,
mere dross and cargo. A flask of
spirits opened, a cigarette
lit, safety catches on, the world
more Judenfrei.
Shoes, now again
pointing in all directions.
© 2018, Frank McMahan
.the star. b/w.
did i sit quietly thinking,
then place a few
things together. yes.
that was exhausting.
the star.
© 2018, (poem and artwork below) Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk; Sonjia’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)
work on paper
installations & photographs- sonja benskin mesher
52.59. 3.
two voices, softly said,
“yes” they cannot
understand the numbers
nor find their families.
© 2018, (poem and artwork below, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk; Sonjia’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)
artwork, Sonja Benskin Mesher
Ode to Trumps Vanity et al
Spring anticipation in the air
Orange reddened sun
Gets ready to hide its rays
Behind the lowest of all mountains
Mirroring itself on the lake.
Vanity at its highest level.
Yet the picture turns out different
In a mixture of yellow and blue
Of greed and sadness a faithful clue.
“You’re so vain,
You probably think
This march is about
You…”
Reads the banner
At the Women’s March
January 21, 2017.
Millions came together
Across the globe
To raise their voices
Against your choices
Mr. Trump.
Your misogyny,
Racism,
Xenophobia,
Your greed and your lies
Are most unwelcome
Because it is your vanity
That makes you lie.
Where’s the first media-built man
That promised jobs for the working-class
To make America First and great again
When all you bring is constant pain
Erasing truths and liberties from earth.
The second man’s now on the surface,
Two sides of the same coin,
And the reddened sun sets down
While Vanity School runs high
For Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders,
Frauke Petry, Beppe Grillo…
And the like.
Even Spain’s Rajoy’s a little Trump,
Profound ignorant and clown,
Who drains the fund backing pensions
With an air smell of corruption.
Won’t you grant us, Catalans,
Once for all that referendum
Any democratic state would offer
To a stateless people to decide:
The right to self-determination.
No, instead, you’re blurring powers
Just exactly as Donald Trump
Judicializing politics and sending
The very democrats to court
For organizing a participatory process
In Catalonia, November 9, 2014.
Vanity School expands its limits
And buys a handful Orwell’s 1984
While the sea has just began to weep:
Mare Nostrum, Mare Mortum,
In 2016 almost 5.000 people
Drowned and died
From 2000 till now 30.000 dead!
With Barcelona’s pro-refugee rally,
The largest in Europe and perhaps
In the entire world till now,
We will surely not have enough
To eradicate our human misery.
The red sun has just hidden
Behind the lowest mountain
And as darkness unfolds
The picture changes colors:
Grayish blues carrying their shadows
On a rippled lake obscured
Where birds and ducks move
Swiftly countercurrent.
© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)
The Excess of Confidence
I was sitting on a meadow one day
A book in my hands, how long I can’t say.
Three hens came close to me and showed no fear
I was most surprised as they came so near.
Was it my presence, so benevolent,
What made them approach me so confident?
They just trusted me and I did the same,
Collective confidence was here the game.
Animals, humans, need it in our lives,
To trust others instead of carrying knives.
Another day, walking in the city
I sensed there was no aggressivity.
On a street, a gay couple holding hands
Perhaps Barcelona now understands.
One person was black and the other white,
They were no longer a most dreadful sight.
Collective confidence was there again
Let’s hope this new tolerance will remain.
In Germany the principle of trust
Seems to be essential, it is a must.
I walk along one of its widest streets
It’s a frequent place where everyone meets.
Then I see a bookcase on a corner
It is public and with books, I wonder.
Books placed in the middle of a street
How pleasant it is to read so sweet
No one thinks to set them on fire
People read for pure desire.
Books travel, they come and go
The shelves have something to show.
No shelf becomes ever empty
For books there are always plenty.
Again collective confidence
Makes possible such a tendence.
Yet confidence remains shadowed
Too much the Germans have swallowed.
As Martí Anglada (1) once said
Their excessive confidence led
To the horrors of the genocide
Did they all ignore what was inside?
Heidegger was controversial
Did he think it was so special?
The Nazi regime would be the best tool
To reform university, how fool!
Essen celebrated Love Parade
Look at all the mess some people made
Beer bottles rolling on the floor
Of that crowded train, I want no more.
On railtracks drunken people walking
The train driver gave us a warning.
Nothing happened, yet soon after
There was more than one disaster:
The Duisburg tunnel, the Germanwings flight
Excess of confidence, a loss of sight.
Then came the Volkswagen case, a new shame,
Where again just too much trust is to blame.
Which country in the world, never mind
Each place carries such cases behind.
If the excess of confidence is no good,
Will we ever learn to act the way we should?
Martí Anglada is a Catalan journalist and the author of the book La via alemanya (The German Way), Brau 2014.
© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)
The responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, April 4, Where is the will of the cup to overcome the sword?, are marked by compassion, concern, insight, and sadness. A collection of heartfelt works by three poets new to Wednesday Writing Prompt (June G. Paul, Frank McMahon, Siobhan Tibbs – bios included by way of introduction) and by three of our dear regulars (Paul Brookes, Sonja Benson Mesher, and Mike Stone). As a part of her response, Sonja has treated us to some of her artwork this week.
Thanks to all six poets for generously sharing their work and coming out to play. We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome – encouraged – novice, emerging or pro.
The Golden Shovel Poem
JUNE G. PAUL is an aspiring poet, wife and grandmother who enjoys creativity. She and her husband live in Portage WI. She recently scheduled a series of monthly poetry readings with featured poets and open mic time. June is currently working on several different writing and art projects. She has self-published two books and will be soon coming out with her first Chapbook which she is titling, My Poems: Chapped not Trapped.
FIND me WORDS
Find me words to stop the slaughter.
Find me words which will be heard
and not just heard but taken up,
amplified and echoed. But not
just voiced by millions or painted
onto banners. Find me words which
will pierce concrete walls and steel-clad
minds, find me words which will stop.
Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms
the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order
more assaults. If they will not desist,
then give me power to move them
to the cellars, the shattered streets
and farms and make them wait alone
while we decide their future. What
can they offer to atone? The dead
and maimed must speak, pronounce. Find
them words to write the final page.
© 2018, Frank McMahon, originally published on Reuben Woolley’s I am not a silent poet
Demolishing Starlight
Shreds of ideas conflate and implode in the city.
Misconnected selves await, lone and lurching,
Fresh numbness to kill the face of the unknown.
Action for re-action, tornado for square yard.
Ambitious chimneys pump carbon into skies:
Deflated vistas, echoed in angry eyes.
Life all around – nature on shutdown.
We lost the midday sun to a rash of window-blinds,
Partitioning humankind. Demolishing starlight.
© 2018, Siobhan Tebbs (Siobhan Tebbs, blog)
SIOBHAN TEBBS is a poet, spoken word artist and fiction writer living in Barcelona and originally from Cheshire, UK. Her work has been published in The Fem lit magazine and Parentheses.
On Bloodwant
She wears the helmet of war
above her red blitzkrieg eyes
and holocaust smoke.
It is her day of blood.
She makes me frenzied.
I mutilate my own arms and legs.
Stab, and let my bloodpain
flow into a cup to drink,
or offer to her.
Invoke the war fury,
so we can lob the spear
into foreign earth.
She is being modest.
Before she wanted sliced
flesh to feed her bloodwant.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
Sword Spirit
Siggy falls fo’ Sword Spirit, beautiful
daughter o’ King Eylimi. Sigmund
wooes Sword Spirit agin younger kings.
Sigmund wins an gets hitched to Sword Spirit
One o’ younger suitors Lyngi says “Tha not ‘aving ‘er. al av thee bollocks on a spit, first. Thas won battle but not war. I’ll av thee.”
Reight scrap an battle ensues,
fists in heads, lamping one another.
Siggy can’t be defeated ‘cos o’ his sword
as is one only he could pull out
on oak int mead hall.
One Eye arrives wi his invincible spear, Swayer. When Siggy sees
One Eye, he attacks him, when he strikes Swayer, Wrath shatters into two.
At night, Sword Spirit, preggers wi Siggy’s bairn, finds her husband still compos on battlefield. Siggy says ” Gather brok bits o’ ma sword, so r son can forge a new un”. “He will avenge me an thy father.”
Lyngi, still wants to marry Sword Spirit,
fails to find her or her treasure,
she’s flitted to Alf, Sea Rover an marries him
Sword Spirit bears a son, she calls Siggy.
Alf, brings up Siggy’s son as his oan
Sigurd
After Counsel’s tale, Siggy agrees
to help his foster-father to get Ottergold
Twice, Counsel meks Siggy a sword,
both brek on anvil. Finally Sword Spirit giz
her son brok bit o’ dead Siggy’s sword.
Counsel forges wi brok bit, Siggy calls sword Wrath. Wi Wrath, Siggy cleaves anvil in two.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
A Bad Day
bad day
The awful conscience cavalry and infantry swept down from their concealed positions in the surrounding hills, blocked the road and engaged my unsuspecting good feeling from three sides.
Surprised and outmanoeuvred,
my good feelings did not have time to draw up in battle array, and were forced to fight desperate hand-to-hand battles
in open order.
My good feelings quickly split into three parts. Westernmost was attacked by awful conscience cavalry and forced into the lake, leaving the other two groups with no way to retreat.
The centre, stood its ground, but was cut down by black dogs after three hours of heavy combat.
In less than four hours, most of the good feeling was killed.
My day went so badly
earthquake has overthrew cities,
turned rivers, levelled mountains.
And all of this was renamed
as Blood River by Charnel House,
my Place of Bones, my Sepulchre,
Cape Red, my Subdued Place
I sliced all my hair off to the scalp.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
We Play Blood
to see others bleed,
for violence, ugliness,
the glorification of war.
Hold our hands over our ears,
close our eyes at the blood delight
we can no longer stand
when feathers bleed,
teeth tear open wounds
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
Against War
mail art
organised by Reiner Langer in Germany
“bombed”
“speaking out”
“boxed and rotting”
****
..the burning..
he said the flames
came over the trees.
behind the buildings.
bombed the buildings.
so do not wonder why
i don’t play soldiers,
lay them down to die.
he says that i will not battle,
i am no good at it.
too peaceful. i can play
hospitals.
© 2018, artwork and poem, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)
. a man who helped another man .
the few know how to detonate, the many don’t.
apostrophe t.
the few add bits and bobs for devastation, multiple
injuries and death. life
changing
a few help the others, while the others suffer
there was a picture of a bomb in blaenau, next
to a drawing of a dick, and a passage from the bible.
hash tag.
deuteronomy.
The last Wednesday Writing Prompt, March 28, invited poets to write about place. Here are the interesting, intriguing, and sometimes poignant responses from poets: Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brooks, Kakali Das Ghosh, and Sonja Benskin Mesher. I’m touched though not surprised that home inspired a few of the poems featured today.
For some writers poetry may be a primary form of artistic expression but it is not the only one. You’ll note, I always include links to contributors blogs when they have them. I hope you’ll visit and get to know them or connect with them on Facebook. Gary, Sonja (an award-winning artist, so many I can’t keep up) and Kakali are stellar artists, very different in style but rewarding. Paul (who often writes in regional dialet), Gary and Sonja are also photographers. Given Paul’s knowledge and love of art, he has distinguished himself with some very fine ekphrastic poetry.
Gary is sharp, original and unique. He honored me with one of his sketches. Thanks again, Gary!
I’m pleased beyond all the words with which we play to present these remarkably talented folks to you here, one of the gratifications of a “connected world.” I hope you’ll share your own work with us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.
the phoenix and phoenix
phoenix arizona lies
asprawl across the valley of the sun,
and that sun in summer stuns one
who is wise to heads indoors,
but the winters, mild and tasty,
bid a million phoenicians rise
and form a wing-flexing phoenix
of basking and bonhomie
and renewal.
© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)
the phoenix and phoenix
phoenix arizona lies
asprawl across the valley of the sun,
and that sun in summer stuns one
who is wise to heads indoors,
but the winters, mild and tasty,
give a million phoeni
© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)
Our Wombwell
sunbreaking brought bling jewels from overnight
rain, droplet tiaras/earrings trees, lampposts ankle bracelets.
On bus glimpse un netted/unblinded windows massive TVs window on window on corporate images: ogle goggle boxed.
Fresh grass laundered, barbeque wafts, rounding white clouds sky ablaze: Natural delights
cat trots downhill to bike shop. Black stringtied purse roadside. Folded bus pass at bus stop: ways home
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
My Black Spot
A treasure island mark on a palm
for which mam says she has blankets
in the airing cupboard.
For any metal crashes
we might hear from
the busy A one.
A grey metal bridge
over the spot
I trundle my Raleigh bike
to meet with crystal set Duncan,
bright as the guards
on his new bike.
An overgrown cottage
with walls like broken teeth
and shattered windscreen glass
meets me at the footbridge bottom.
There is no blood,
only what’s left after the event.
On return footbridge
is now flyover, black spot removed.
Folk fly by too fast.
My old home is a turn off.
into village quiet.
A place folk glance at
on the way to elsewhere.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
Flinch At Cold, Cold,
sticky touch
of scaffold pole steel,
in the sunblaze,
negotiate unlashed wooden
planks of a half built brick house
opposite my Mam and Dad’s,
miss my foothold, bang my knees,
graze my elbows, dazed, brickdust gob,
lightblinded
see behind closed eyes, few years earlier,
another bright, warm summer,
my fall
fifteen feet from a branch
in a tall forest, to sharp earth,
concussed, bruised, rip
my jeans, leaf litter gob,
so mate John,
who I’ve played with
for months takes
me, where I’ve never been,
over the massive quiet
of the cricket pitch of a cut lawn
his dad’s garden,
crunch pristine, white gravel
to his big sandstone Hall,
John says “Take them off.”,
as he takes his shoes off,
I take off my forested sneakers,
through white barndoor
of a front door, smell fried onions,
pad over red tiled hallway,
into a bright, high frontroom,
bigger than our village school
assembly hall,
to a vast leather settee
and first colour tv I’ve ever seen,
looks small in the centre
of this space,
asks me to sit while his mam
fetches a warm
cup of tea in a china cup,
and asks if I want her
to fetch my mam or dad.
I say “It’s kind of you to say,
but, no. I’m ok.”
And sunblinded, sore,
bloody again, on the scaffold,
reluctant,
as mam said, “And don’t let me
catch you clambering over
that building site!”
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)
#It Was The First Time #
It was the first time
I was there
It was the first time
I felt his touch on my shoulders
Bay of Bengal :gazed at me with its profound look
With its stories untold for years immemorial
With its beach bathing under April sun
With its wavy dance dashing over boulders carving relics
It was the first time a heavenly child on a horse threw a celestial smile at me while passing through rocks
It was the first time he rehashed me
a statue spellbound
And it was the first time that tamarisk wood in the skyline
swayed each corner of my heart
My courage unfolded to say you -“I’m yours -just yours .”
© 2018, Kakali Das Ghosh
:: wonder land ::
it was a long winter
spring came, and i went to
wonderland
finished work, drove the hill,
there before me, misted,
pink polaroid,
pointy trees,
i could not breathe
for wondering.
plas newydd, the house
of lady friends
who flew from family
to nest in looking
glass.
a world away.
breathe came,
all there was in the
whole world was this place
yesterday.
pin pointed, pinhole,
and mindfulness.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)
.home.
to live in this place,
walk down to see fish,
waterboat men, dimpling
miniscus.
rest amongst bird
song, tapping the wood.
know you have
a piece of mind,
however fleeting.
to be in this place.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)
.this place.
enjoyed waiting with you, leaning on the fence.
quietly remember you who made this place. special.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 