May 2

..scratching..

quiet now

we can hear the birds no problem
one lorry on the road essential travel

then

we hear the scratching

when dark comes
comes the scuttlings

flutterings outside

bats fly round our houses

inside
others live and die

the fly

&

the moth comes lovely
soft and tasteful

nothing distasteful

we saves them
lifts them out the bath
a dry flannel as assistance

remember that fly in the room you wanted to swat
for
annoying. left alone it went quietly away

night came full of sounds

mice
scratching enough to leave

marks

enough to leave marks

the fly does

buzz when it flies
buzz as it dies

zzzzzt

-sonia benskin mesher

*

Inclined to mention the halo of a mountain, somewhere
I am fourteen years old. This is a mountain behind a house
where I still remain, in this thought-process, every child
chews spearmint gum. It is definitely spearmint gum, and
the mountain is only a halo, now, this time, elsewhere. Like,
I don’t know, like Mark Fisher says, this stasis has been
buried – ‘the inventor of the term, a frustrating thinker’.

*

In the summer’s
taped shut windows,
without seeing
flies in years.

Hit mosquitos
against the wall,
once observing
blood left behind.

-Alex Mazey

Geyser

Soul rumbles as grumble
dark bellows push
their boiling fist.
Hot drops, boiled rain.

Angry fats splatter
into faint signs, streaks of
early mournful light.

Fire waters bubble and churn
chained by conventions,
damned by convection.
In breaking songs of earth’s heat,
brash displays of prorogued grief.

Water crouches, fluid evasive.
As pain it cannot be broken.
Desire free to flow,
hurt a haunt of generations.

So strictures die
and violence will be
a multiple of passing times.

-©️ Dai Fry 1st May 2020.

In memory of those left behind : 9 December 2019

Sun’s first sleep-breath
sweets the dropped shoulder
of te puia whakaari, her bones

in early mistlight, are all grace
and delicate pickings, gulled
clavicles of a hard dancer, stilled. Coiled tension, resting.

It is hard to recognise a haunting, in the rose-gilt of sunrise.
Do you know her name? When you recognised it, did you forget
to exhale? Release your living now to cloud

the pane we do not see – watch deep scratches creep
across this vision. The guardians are always here, and the light
oh the light may change any moment.

-Ankh Spice

The Yellow Forest

Awakening – Dry mouth burning eyes skin burn, breathe.
Pin point vision echoing mission failed fission, inhale.
Heavy feet slow reaction no connection – A siren a siren!
Wake up stand up react retract, breathe.

Forest Walk – Dislodge move seek react engage stop!
Burning embers leaves glowing eagles falling feathers
floating, breathe. Listen observe – A lark hark the warning
A flash a flash, breathe. Eyes open sight broken, breathe.

Chokehold – Black river dead fish foul odour slow down,
Breathe. Soil on fire charcoal roots sprouting rotten fruit –
Stop smell retreat, breathe. Dead of night presence sucking
remaining air laboured breathing heartbeat slowing – Find
the opening, breathe. Look beware – Run!

The Gamdroela

Far beyond the Hottentotshuisie Mountains,
a mythical creature awaits to reward the chosen
one – Elected by the Bokmakierie Korrelkop,
a strange elusive soothsayer, traditionally
enshrined to make a wise choice – A new ruler
for the remote Belhar nation to once again wear
the sacred crown of Sekueb Nodmai, she whose
voice still echo from deep within the Bolemakiesie
marshlands –
A treacherous journey awaits the young Tandpyn,
Prince of the Bloekomboom tree nation, whose
Lands have nearly been scorched bare by the
Fiery blizzards of Macassar – Now charged
with the ultimate sacrifice, crossing the
Moddergat fynbos wetlands to eventually
reach the steep trail leading up to Fluweeltjie –
Lair of the ancient Gamdroela , a kleurvolle
Colourful but powerful oracle who will
Decide on the worthiness of the young Tandpyn…

-Don Beukes

The Dream

I had a dream last night
Of walking thru a forest-like place
Filled with earthy illuminances

I could barely make out the sharp
Round edges of branches and limbs
Bathed in a heavenly glow

These trees, so strange yet so familiar
These giants, so murky yet so real
Their aromatic odors filled my essence

And for the briefest of moments
I believed to be back home among these ancient pines
Until my eyes opened to the sterile white walls

-Carrie Ann Golden

Fly Away, Dream

When television broadcasting
Ended after late night news
And comedy shows, yellow, blue, magenta hues

On test patterns
Would send humanity
To bed, to fly away wistfully,

As on insect wings,
To a place of dreams
And endless possibilities.

-st

flaiku

what to us is dross
is a rainbow to the fly
perspective is key

-Rich Follett

Her Splash Of Veins

flutters, is still, proboscis twitch.
Flutters, is still, twitch.

Splash of wheat in fields,
Flutters as flywings.

Strands of wheat flywalk skin
as she passes she swats the touch away.

Till as she treads down more stalks
into the unmade bread of the field
bunches of wheat stroke her thighs
and she smiles at the bright sun of it all.

Snatches a stalk, lets it hang from her mouth
a proboscis tremble in the gust of her dreams
of flight above the ready to be harvested grain
rises toward sun blaze newly risen

warm bread a splash of veins in full colour,
breathes in her baked youth like goodness.

-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/

https://www.iambapoet.com/poets-wave-two

May 1

..looks like you are drowning..

part one

looks like you are drowning &
hope i am wrong. i can see the
struggle
the turn about in water.

i have done that too
pat says that i have paid the price
but i wonder

i hope
you survive
come clean
bare
your feathers.

fly high

if not
i will lay a petal
and think of you

as i think of the others
that drowned before you
that had no feathers

part two,

it looks like you are drowning
again
shall I jump in to save you and maybe
sink myself
or shall I wait to see
to lay a flower at our feet

part three

maybe you are not drowning really
that I made it up and you are dancing
like the others

while people die and we lay flowers
in memoriam
corona

part four

you are floating maybe; I did that for hours
went spongy, now face reality and
I still think that you are drowning
like the others.

-sonja benskin mesher

concrete reasoning

gray day: i am
out for a walk when
a sidewalk camellia
begs myriad questions:

runaway bride?

garden club mishap?
rejected proposal?
hothouse runaway?
centerpiece rebel?

confronted by the unexplained,
the human drive to make order from chaos
is relentless.

whatever the story,
the end is the same:
beauty appears and
we can only wonder …

with a schedule to keep
and no answers at hand
i press onward,
feeling the inner bloom
of nascent gratitude.

-Rich Follett

MF 1

*

Every time I find clay in the garden, beneath a rosebush, say,
I find slate too. This is just something I have noticed over the
course of a year. It is not necessary to mention these things,
especially now, I suppose. I am not happy unless I’m pouring
something – tomato feed. I am Philip Levine’s Burial Rights,
I recall Bei Dao. These days, I feel the trick to a good carpark,
to feel anything, is my proximity to this flower arrangement.

JK 1

*

A story of three fish might be
fish bones in a field for birds.
Koi feeding, koi feed in a
garden centre, at the next
junction. Fish bent back over
backwards, in blue paint.
Scattered to the water’s edge
a handful of dirt, to a handful
of colour, blue scales at the
centre of the field, a water
mark, a stone left unturned.

-Alex Mazey

The Life of Petals

We use flowers to mark occasions–
Weddings and funerals.
The petals linger only briefly,
But the sentiment still hangs
Heavy in the air, years after
Like pollen
That settled over and over again
On our patio table and chairs,
All those long Midwestern summers
When heat robbed our lungs of breath. And
Wildflowers, not cut-storebought ones, marked a different time,
Of an everyday type.
Now, cut flowers feel gluttonous to me.
And petals bless us with
The gentleness of how life ought to be.

-st

Utopia Burning

Warnings ignored from many a social
self appointed warlord
Echoes of dissident discord striking
a high-pitched off key note
As hungry flames lick and lash causing
an apocalyptic molten urban and
suburban foretold mess
Whispered by familiar oracles
their verbal miracles documenting their
fiery cautionary chronicles
Of systems slowly imploding temperaments
exploding fake veneers and smiles
exfoliating as ignorant masses squawk
for a helping hand from those
witnessing their demise and burning
squirming shedding acid tears for
Utopia burning…

© Don Beukes

Still Silent

No sound, water jelly flat,
so still it hurts my ears.
Even sun slides silently
into autumn’s metal light.

All jamboree, clang and din
now far away in time.
Even breath is offensive here,
in case of ripple and slapping rocks.

I cannot read or turn a page
lest a mumble or paper scrape,
escape and shatter the loch.
Like a breaking glass to
a rousing cheer,
as all that knowledge gets out.

So I stare at reflections
in late day waters
reliable quiet, but maybe
their heat is not that hot.

©️ Dai Fry 30th April 2020.

The sweet flower’s heart
Wilting on the cold, hard slab
My love’s final gift

-Carrie Ann Golden

Camellia

You lay beautiful and gasping
alone on Tithonian stone.
A sudden fall from grace,
petal broken angel:
forage for sweeper winds.

Transient as summer days.
Temperate these forevers soon
fade to winter grey.
Dog-day memories
cannot abide short-day cold.

What are you,
I wonder?
A love certified in
Bacchus’s dance
or a loved one
certified and boxed
in tears and brown ale.

©️ Dai Fry 30th March 2020.

The giant fish takes back the myth

The morning before she was to become a story
the sea was baited quiet, the kind that silks

all desire down to swish. To decide to leap
from one cool world to another just for breakfast

is to bare your colours to the scaling knife of the wind,
and she did – her fireback beacon launched

for the brief protein of flying legs. How often we fail
to see that dark hull waiting, we beasts so full up

with the rush of living for our risks.
And the shape of the poised hero held no meaning, to a fish

but oh the shimmerhook, like all the moons
her eye’s nightcoin had ever purchased

from deep beneath the water, and there is the lust, the swish-
-and want. The glowworm crescent to silver her belly.

We all want to shine in fullness.
Only heroes are given names in these stories.

For her need she was translated
into an island, and I am running the delicate gasp of her jaws

in the shape of this coast, forever straining for the hook
and still called only fish

even with all we have made of her. Every time I desire
to transcend my quiet water, I forget the heroes

and leap from her skin, and hope
that landing empty

but with one eye fixed on the moon
every night after this will be enough.

-Ankh Spice

Beheaded Camelia’s

delicate red petals last longer on the less travelled path.
Flash of disappearing red lace, paper thin survival.
Unbroken in bright sunlight, bright on grey stone.
Destruction stays at home to avoid destruction.

The red wing is allowed space to revolve reflect in water.
“Temporary” like the word “soon”, a duration undecided.

-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.

-Anjum Wasir Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. My family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the (1947)Partition of India. Educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi.Graduated with Distinction in English Lang. & Literature in 1968 from the Punjab University. Won the All Round Best Student Cup.1968.
Obtained a Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies Punjab University P.G. Diploma in TEFL from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE from Cambridge University UK (LSE British Council)1991 Developing Educators in Pakistan Training Course sponsored by IFC & Bradford University 1999.Bronze Medal Poet of Merit Award by International Society of Poets & http://Poetry.com USA 2000 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO, (National Novel Writing Month)
Adventure Novel ‘ The Adventures of the Multi Colored Lead People’ in the printing process.
Educator Writer since 1990 Editor College Magazine
Creative Writer English at Channel 7 Pvt Ltd Islamabad.National Education Award Winner 1998 for Research & Publications.

-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/