The mirror of my soul
I dare not look
But she stares up at me
With eyes of
black
abyss
-Carrie Anne Golden
Gold versus Silver
We argued aesthetics that whole year –
you with gold-dust in your corner, me mooning
over silver. The sighs that left your lips
whenever the lecturer mentioned Zoia
substantiated spangled curls– your gaudy Fibonaccis.
Your opinions sprung the air for days. Austerity
they’d tinkle over my preference for Saint Petersburg
in winter, all lunar-and-pale-blue. Second place.
And I only smiled gibbous, because the game
was to remain the ghost, to haunt your gilt. We’re so needy
of the wind-up, when there’s tension that can never spring.
So when you went and split, three days before
that long-awaited trip, I thought you’d simply
struck it rich, embraced the god I knew you were. Ripe-
sprouting corn or wheat somewhere, or suffocating for your art
in a second molten skin.
When I heard you’d succumbed
to quite ordinary water, I was flying over Siberia – hours of nothing
but blinding ice, silverblue and wounded deep with rivers.
The sun arrived like a cough –
loud, and with no thought for breath,
and it turned out you were right the whole time.
-Ankh Spice
..stains..
all the while while
twinned atop currently
heads split in two
to remember it
rust and mould grows steadily
we are all under now
be careful what you wish for
be steady in your own place now
you made slide and stain your outer
clothing
rust and mould
sbm.
*
Never really understood the appeal of these southern seas, looking north,
tiny sail boats, a grey sky. I wiped the walls with the backs of my hands,
once, and again, once more, every day develops as a week, as a lifetime.
Some days, you only have the kitchen towel to hold. A half can of beans
all to yourself, each bowl of hot water regarding, warm regards, relativity
like a new freedom. Hung shirts on the kitchen door, despite everything,
despite your incessance to the way things are, and the way they should be.
-Alex Mazey
Twisted Gemini
Castor – I dwell here willingly, feeding on ancient moss,
The remains of us –
What we once were so I syphon my nourishment from below sucking any life left of a once
shared existence in a reality with no morality, for this I do
not apologise as my essence relies on the gift of her sacrifice for we are still one even though I was shunned from the
enrichment of many suns, so now I exist here in my elected sphere knowing I last eternally whist her light is fading…
Pollux – I dwell here unwillingly resting on rotten ancient moss long since decayed since the memory of us went up in flames now licking my remains as I suck from the core of a fallen star burning tongue to the point where I feed on distant planets just to ensure my fading essence does not become part of this galaxy’s eternal darkness – I sometimes sense his presence and for a fleeting starburst moment I want to wrap my arms around him as we used to be, entwined in interstellar nourishing dust but then I realise that was just a disguise to cloak unexpected darkening skies…
We are Gemini – We still dwell here each one of us doing our best to somehow confess that we were meant for this unnatural symbiotic existence of life and death our own consequential neglect so we still exist here and nowhere –
A twisted ill-fated star ejected doomed Gemini…
-Don Beukes
Reflections
Can you see
What you need
To see in reflection pools
That haunt
With their half-truths, broken imagery –
Taunting
Us to look harder,
Search deeper?
But reaching
In too far, disrupts the picture
Completely. Causes a
Fissure
In understanding.
And attempting
To restore a lost vision
Is flirting with the impossible.
To discern, seamlessly
Examine life’s ripples.
-st
Tangled
This tangle I’m in
of root and branch
where abandoned
horizons crossing
lines across
an angry devil’s brow
between the barbs
the horns that hold
my flickering life
in their cupped hands.
Feared of the moss
green dampening dark
as every year
my tangle grows
imperceptibly slow
and croaky cry so
crowed and cawed
to stay or go within
the limits of the flow.
As I stare out of my bulging
wide this baby’s eye
and the innocence sighs
of old souls dribbling
torrential gushing truth
in streams that roar comes
from the corners of their
river mouth now
a gaping Hades gate
a maw.
More than a view
a dream what might
or could have been
stretched into each limb
to calculate a figurine’s
life of brittle comforts
as prelude not to preclude
the kicks and rage
when even to live
with cherub face pressed
to muddy ground is
taking a stand for the choice
and not to be held
in thrall to your dreams.
concrete wall acne?
clogged artery cross-section?
(point?) in g*d we t/rust
-Rich Follett
My Shape That
pleases gravity
my stone head cradled
in an ant’s mandibles
dappled in the glade
of a bird bath a city
rises from canals
of rust, a blue and gold
of decay.
-Paul Brookes
cento
Dappled in the glade
we’re so needy
with their half-truths, broken imagery.
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.’
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.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth
-Elizabeth Moura
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
Roots take the shape of their container,
bound by how they began. And still what grows up
and out from there is all its own – a plant
in tight square shoes opens leaves
as the hands of a supplicant, fingers spread
to receive the manna of the light. You might say oh
but that’s in the hum of the seed, I say we sing
ourselves beyond the plans of these bodies.
And really isn’t any plan just a bargain
between a beast and Chronos – we ink our water
with intent to stay the course, and hope that means
he holds the dust and lets us sail. No harvest
until we’re done. We seldom win that bet.
Well, I unplan these bones, I am throwing all that
to the wild. The pots are smashed, the shoes
are lost, my hungry leaves
are opening all at once. The world I am is tired
of holding steady and the world
beyond this skin is tired. What I’m sure about
is this honey rain of light, every second
waiting to be eaten. What I’m sure about
is your eyes on me, that look as bright and full of time
as a newly-watered thing, still growing
until it can’t. What I’m sure about
is that we grew so hard we lifted off the roof
and now the sun makes long, long moments of our shadows.
-Ankh Spice
future pasha
lush palmetto fronds,
cinquefoil Byzantine backdrop—
sedan chair daydreams
-Rich Follett
*
Ruins can be presented as a victory, often are, cheap seats and cold tea,
the impressions of a palm leaf – some people are so happy God is dead,
it is their greatest achievement to never meditate on cold stones at 6AM,
to never consider those lasting implications, each food bank, each action
like a palm leaf, miniature achievement, occasionally revised upon death
like it still mattered, somehow, some things will never change, no matter
Ulrike Meinhof, no matter the litany of crimes in a bank – or on the way.
-Alex Mazey
.the plant house.
oh dear me, I find myself back in the plant house
where all things grow
lush
where the piano plays though we don’t know that tune
we hear
here we only know fear
and hiding again it splits
in two
of us
splits into fragments, pieces
that don’t fit
it is all a puzzle
it is a challenge
unless you are back in the plant house
sbm.
Pieces
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
W.B.Yeats, The Second Coming.
We are all in pieces.
Shattered light kicks out
across empty skies,
and we are particles
in a distorted field,
fighting the magnetism
that draws us back together.
We are all in places
far from those we love.
The actions of others
confuse and distress.
Am I my brother’s keeper
from so far away?
And what do I owe
to strangers?
We all pay the price
of isolation and fear,
watching as the world changes.
But when we come
together at last,
the shattered lights of our
separated lives
will shine
We are all pieces of the pattern.
-Yvonne Marjot
Twilight Asylum – Epilogue
Silence descending as dissident muted voices
start disappearing – A muffled screech a candle
snuff hush, ‘Let me go, I…where – Hello?
Hollow footsteps signal unknown consequences
to our failed resistance against warped mental
masters. A frantic hush as the memories of us
slowly melt into digital nanonite archives keeping
our fried minds alive but we are not us anymore –
Our protests are not heard anymore only facial
contortions marking our silent revolutionary
protestations in this neon nation mental nerve-end
best – Our echoes now mere static clues to our
accelerated induced darkness, ‘Let us out!’ I hear
ourselves collectively urge our familiar captors
flailing about hoping to permanently silence us
into sacrificial submission causing a confusing
existential mental stirring – A toxic injected rush
a molecular ignition prompting a defiant sensation
against darkening domination by career obsessed
psychological head-hunters attempting to tweak
us clone us modify us end us in this, our twilight
asylum our declining fading flat lining hum…
-Don Beukes
Now And Then
The beginning
of memory.
Such simplicity,
for I was summer born.
Scents of sun warmed wool,
over wild flowered grass.
And now in myself
mercurial, natural.
Every sense
each impression,
Is both now and then.
I was
passive in its presence.
Enjoying laughter,
its sweet tones.
And it burnt
my language away.
For I did not
have the need of it,
where I was that day.
“And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” -Revelation 8:11
Eradicate snails with
Garlic, wormwood or
Copper.
They’re slow enough to
Catch and pick off
One-by-one,
If you have the patience.
But maybe we shouldn’t.
Maybe, we should
Learn from them instead –
Sequestered in their
Homes, taking life
More slowly than the
Surrounding world,
Social-distancing to
Keep themselves safe.
-st
My Container
My green house skull container environment
is dynamic and can be hard to follow.
I need a container map
and reality facing container view,
So I can visualise
the health of my container.
My thoughts were once Ptolemaic planets:
complicated. It’s pretty hard to account
for the movement of thoughts this way.
I live in a cloud.
My greenhouse skull container is a host
that comes and goes every few minutes.
Life is miserable because my brain always thinks
half of my infrastructure is on fire.
My thoughts are now Copernican,
I am no longer the centre. I am unearthed.
-Paul Brookes
cento
We seldom win the bet.
If you have the patience.
I can visualise the health.
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.’
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.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth
-Elizabeth Moura
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
A sleeping angel
Or demon in dormant state
The eyes know the truth
-Carrie Anne Golden
.angel.
the word came involuntarily,
others were stuck, yet i knew
them to be beautiful, and
so they are.
powers and dominions,
virtues, re search them.
it was cool there,
we learned about protection,
quiet spaces.
there is an hierarchy, yet
some words remain faultless.
some need to be remembered
numbers came suddenly soon after one.
nothing added any more, all began to subtract, divide,
the result algebraic there are no rulers, lines to divide, the total is irrelevant now, the addition foremost.
i have been to the counting.
initially, crossed the sea to the land, from one to another, then, talking. crossed the narrow bridge spoke of the past, you know what i mean. courage to walk
away
angel
-sbm
seraph in silk
arachnid angel
dreaming sacred prophecies—
spinners weave their thanks
-Rich Follett
*
You see it in the statues,
sometimes, of great places, a sadness so great you cannot bring yourself
to look. Each preposition becomes another promise, a word breathed into
a dealt card. Say – I bought three for two on oranges, bought an orange
tree, and planted it in the back garden of my teacher’s house, and when
it rained, felt something, ate my tea on Sundays, ate my tea like a dinner.
We are awful to each other – behind windows – that which matters most.
-Alex Mazey
Return to Zero
Chrome dreams black diamond memories meandering into charcoal
screams – A sudden starburst mercurial
thirst sucking liquid stars licking comet hearts frozen parallel worlds ignited light years burning into multiple far flung spheres – A
a peculiar anomaly rising in another galaxy
growing stronger melting unknown matter
scattered across distant burnt out moons
their cores still simmering from brilliant blue
fumes – Desperate to return to zero teasing
the time continuum bending the status quo
disappearing into a strange new halo absorbing
foreign entities on a rush to return at l costs
to a world under the dust of us –
What we once
was as versions of us the memories of ash…
-Don Beukes
Now Angel
Now angel, far
dreams lie fallow.
Tear ducts, weep
falls of dust.
Wither my arms,
so I can soar.
Stone chest, a brace
for god like wings.
And of earthly hunger.
Love and anger.
Of triumphs, the
ache of human pain.
Or an early love,
when the bedside light
went black.
Will you take my sadness,
strip it out. Gutted on
the butcher’s floor.
Once all I was.
I am
Counter-relief,
Sunk in to the
Background,
Eyes closed.
At first, I was
Biding time,
Utilizing all manner of
Self-control,
Resisting every urge at
Instant gratification.
But after all that waiting,
In the alcove of
My heart –
Until cobwebs threatened
To grow over me –
The time was never right
To break free from the
Plaster façade of
My reality.
Besides,
No one wanted
The esoteric substance I’d
Painstakingly acquired while
My eyes were closed
Tightly in meditation.
But in the hand of an ironic sculptor,
The immaterial becomes material, and
Fetters, the catalyst for freedom.
-st
Elegy
We grew centimetres in cemeteries. Books
and candles, sans the bell. To sit among the ghosts
is to solid yourself, by comparison. Halfway between the stone
and the spirit – some days the blank-eyed angel. Your features
were inclined towards the sweet, your hands
drawn strong to bitter. The hard paints they found
to chase the human from your face
convinced the mirror. I, so unreflective,
knew you hollow beneath the round, a blown egg
painted black. We edged brittle
around the needle-poke, the cracks. And when you smashed
to bits, they glued you wrong – pillowed on a colour
you’d toddlered. Your cheeks apples, rosy,
long poisoned. I saw you beckon in the worm.
-Ankh Spice
Message
This is not a message.
I am not a messenger.
I am not communicating with you.
I do not give you a pattern
To decipher.
These symbols do not mean anything.
These pictures do not say anything.
You cannot name anything
in the pictures. Meaning does
Not exist. Any names you do give
Are wrong. Names mean nothing.
These pictures mean nothing.
I am not a namer.
Things should not be named.
It limits things. Classifies them.
I will not cllassify.
I will not limit.
I have nothing to say,
So I am saying nothing.
-Paul Brookes
cento, nominate:
Until cobwebs threatened
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.’
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.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
“Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, ‘Oh well, let it go, that’s what copyeditors are for.'” Stephen King,On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft [Recommended]
After your first draft:
REST and then CUT: Figure out what works best for you when it comes to editing: computer screen or hard copy. Find a quiet time and space to revise content and flow. Make sure your thesis is clear. Cut everything irrelevant to your thesis. Sometimes the points or words you think are clever are the ones that should be cut. Be ruthless.
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
ATTEND TO THE EASILY RECOGNIZED PROBLEMS: Cut redundancies. Cut the unnecessaries: rule of thumb (“rule” will suffice)…
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies ofThe Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), American poet, writer, critic and satirist
When I started as a young writer, I was shocked to see my work edited if accepted and sometimes dramatically so. There were a few occasions when I didn’t even recognize it as my own. I eventually got it. If I wanted to be sure my work was published the way I meant it to be, that it said what I meant it to say, the trick was to fine-tune content and flow, proofread and copy edit. I learned to let work gestate (a day or a week or more depending…
(some questions
are better left unanswered)
!
-Rich Follett
*
Of course, to be alive is to be a long time sick, the Twilight of the Idols,
it seems, no worse than the cold light, each new morning, that must rise
again, somehow, without a promise, without God. I don’t want to sound
like another conviction. I’ve found brass in the backroads, the cold stone,
the lonely parts of a field, dug up coins, dug up bullets, and hid them again
with my small feet, out of respect for the feet of the couple walking West,
for work, for the smaller hands, for the new morning; anything worthwhile.
-Alex Mazey
.deflecting.
it broke
shattered
broken reflections
of a former life
smashed as it hit the floor
things do on quarried
slate
he mended things carefully
an art
watch
you can learn it
too
place the pieces back together
look in the mended mirror
carefully
see those things
deflected
-sbm.
The Anomaly
Strange new mind sets reign in our heads like an interplanetary virus
spreading its unknown influential pulse causing false rumours to
intoxicate our conscience igniting our darkest most secret impulses
turning our controlled thinking into warped imagined casualties urging
us to instinctively react to keep our sanity intact ready for any ill–perceived
imaginary attack to our status quo – All
too willing to lash out speak up remove
recalibrate our usual mental state to question
more interpret differently going against our
natural impulses unknowingly suddenly
accepting a dangerous dubious anomaly…
Falling Skies
A normal morning no warning
acid rain falling spilling into man-made
crevices filling up with humanity’s
self-inflicted collected accidents nature’s
revenge overloading our senses trying our
best to make sense of this despite obvious warnings now visible in multiple aerial frescoes clogging our minds unable to comprehend the
effect or our moral neglect of what we were
meant to protect –
Our blue planet now a diminishing shrinking
entity reversing the status quo as nature’s
forces recalibrate regenerate annihilate whilst we flee from tumbling free-falling
falling skies fading fast into nothingness…
-Don Beukes
Explosion
“I scourged myself today in sea salt, wind and spray”
Take this anger, really despair,
in a blanket of gentle silence.
To lay on the rock ledge
pitted and wet,
within strike of the sea.
Something inside is
both explosive and caustic.
And as each day builds
containment appears
to be, a vain solution.
But the ocean’s
water soothes,
takes the pain and
wraps it in a sea of
love and indifference.
“Wind chilled, exhilarated:
I turn for home.
And in my emptiness grows
wisdom’s warming glow”
If the earth
Were the sky,
The sky, earth –
We would already be
Creatures
Of the ephemeral.
Clouds and angels
Would be the
Tangible ones
Who bear the burden
Of worldly
Caregiving.
Maybe then,
I could
Finally be content,
Even while knowing
There are others
Who aren’t.
-st
Hold
These days when the eye of the world
droops nearly closed, nictating milk-light.
These days when the skin opaques
stretched thin over the rattle, barely containing it.
These days when the embers of seeds
must fall far from the branch to even think about growing.
These days when the earth licks away
the scrapes of machines, revives the microbe armies.
These days when we hold each other drowning
in the choppy wake of our dwindling water.
These days when we talk and talk
and talk until tongues fork from trying to mean.
These days when we tilt our heads giddy and can’t recall
what we spent every hour worried about.
These days when everyone is made of knives.
These days when the empty sky reflects
only single trees, standing dead still.
=Ankh Spice
The Becoming
stilled. Exploded view
of change from one form to another.
Explosion is creation
of something new.
Multiverse ever expands
until it collapses into itself
draws all into it,
hoards its wealth.
Watercolour drips ever suspended,
raindrops hang over greenery,
wait for the remainder
of the fall in silent liquidity.
All forests are rainforests.
Rain explodes on branches,
Inside your skull the forest
regrows on its haunches.
-Paul Brookes
Cento
These days when we talk and talk
I scourge myself today
in sea salt, wind and spray.
finally to be content
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.’
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.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Yvonne Marjot
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
Photograph courtesy of Andrew Neel, Unsplash. 
Photograph courtesy of 
The Wombwell Rainbow 