MF6

I run my hand over my past,

Where did the time go?

How trite to ask. How human.

I want to feel where a picture

Made by a child must’ve been

Until adolescence tore it up.

I want to see where a head

Chipped the paint.

Where did the time go?

#6

how I remember mama:

recumbent with cucumber slices

hot stuff on a blazing beach

between her lover,

her life, and others;

that would be her children,

playing ball discreetly

In the lathering surf

with a Portuguese Man of War

-Elizabeth Moura

Abstractions

Making sense of abstract pale green
The mind reads as moss
Which proliferates into vegetation.
Hen and chicks begin again
In repurposed terrariums
From some old Mother’s Day,
Signifying children and growth;
Elders and death;
Soil and air
Until abstract greys and greens
Are life force made concrete.

-st

Yellow Mars

Stretched beyond any story,
outside of organic memory.
Time lives without passing.
It’s life: a slow definition
of measure in stain.

When I was young
I saw a bright
yellow lichen near the sea.
I wanted to lick it
to sense and to taste it.
This bright, lives there still.

Yellow as gorse flower
orange as rust.
Lichen covers our world.

On the ISS they
breathed the vacuum
and survived.
One day they will
turn Mars yellow.

Then:
On a clear night
you may see
a lichen star.

©️ Dai Fry 5th May 2020.

Shift

When what was left of the mountain heaved
the men were stroking the ground with their tillers
and to the worried horses, whose ancestors
had been told for three hundred years
that men knew what they were doing
it seemed the infant was soothed, that the tired-out dirt
had simply sighed and turned over. And so they nodded
the great brushbrooms of their blinkered heads
and stepped forward onto the grey scree, between the lines
of unmade earth, and the unmountain wept
as she received them into her hot belly.
And swirling with their blades the motes of dust
that were only sadness, floating
the men said to each other ‘but why were the horses so stupid?’
and the trees, the only wild green left in miles
and miles and miles of neatly turned fields
shuffled close on the ridge, hiding completely
the great wave roaring in, that water
briefly the same shape as the mountain’s memory of herself

-Ankh Spice

..faceless ..

faceless

from nowhere, no name
nor eyes yet we saw the bloodied halo

angel
power and dominion

swept through silent almost biblical if you
#readthat
note how the layout is columns, numbered stanzas
unlike other books
tied away in cupboards

here
was black and smudges
then
carefully we drew her out
all tidy with reason, wearing
us down

wearing the kimono
corona
wearing the coat
corona
whatever you wear
corona

faced away

only stone
set before
set like fire in empty barns

#readthat

the social worker was a bitch back then

#didyoureadthat?

gongbi guise

painted silk or weathered stone?
where vision ends
imagination begins

artist’s paean to nature or
nature’s paean to art?
perfection neither asks nor answers

-Rich Follett

Tenalp Htrae

Earth Whispers – Light years have passed since
leaving our blue planet, only white noise echoes
remain of a world imploded by human negligence
of a fragile natural existence meant to sustain
maintain billions of our former human species
but our ancient predecessors plundered misused
abused neglected and rejected what Earth had
to offer – Yet they were destined to suffer for
ignoring existential warnings of natural resources
depleted excavated extracted annihilated – To
the point of meltdown. Now all we see are the
historical images shown to new generations born
in a new world a new existence a new consciousness.

Bleeding Earth – Any hope of ever returning to our
ancestral home is slowly burning as eons of efforts
to detect new life has come to an abrupt end – New
footage reveal a dismal reality of a tired planet bleeding
it’s waters evaporated by swirling fire tornados rocks
melting fauna and flora now long gone fossils – The
life-giving atmosphere now a toxic choking layer,
So we still mourn our forced lonely new daily dismal
Dawn on planet Tenalp Htrae, light years away…

-Don Beukes

The Many

clocks of her face tick
as the world decays and rusts.

Some say to her
your clocks have no hands.
Some say to her
you’ve no idea of time.

Your timing is all over the place,
clock arms, clock lungs, clock legs,
clock heart but no clock face.

Knows her blood and breath tell the time,
beat precision and control
her faces watch the world’s decline.

Knows within her
time is a rhythm without clocks,
a body that tells
time every month,
her hidden scars and bruises
show time passes.

-Paul Brookes

*

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/