Day 26

Spurn

-John Law

-Jane Cornwell

Nine of Wands

-Kerfe Roig

Welcome to The Garden

The child found the archway
and entered the garden. Wet hands
pressed brief starfish into the moss
cushioning the bricks as she steadied herself, all new
to this walking thing. After her, a green landscape wept
thick rain, puddled a creation myth of tardigrades
singing for the five tributaries, the goddess
who had seen fit to seed them from her baby fingers.
You would have said the child carried nothing
and the cloud-cataracts of her eyes did not reflect
any sky you would recognise. By the third step
she had doomed a race of grass-dwelling moons,
had startled a new shade of pink to mean eve–
ning is inevitable but also morning will be beautiful
and she could replicate the roly-polys
of worms being silently valuable, eating and excreting
all the riches of her lengthening shadow.
There were nine strong stakes planted firmly
in the weeds, each hoping out a different kind of leaf
that would feed her and hurt her by turns.
There was no wrong choice. Nothing was burning.
Her grip was very strong now
and the pluck was sure
and clean, though the earth sighed from the hole
in her side as the thorn eased free. Worms rolled in
quietly to fill up the wound. When the child left, the garden
was more alive or more dead everywhere
she’d ever touched. She carried tenderly her poison
and her panacea, and the dark mouth of the arch called
¬–you did everything right. Now you must return¬¬–
and that held no fear for her at all.

-Ankh Spice

Spurn

Nature’s beauty
jealously pushed from the land
Peaceful protected
sanctuary stretching away from harm
Drifting on the tide
reaching attempting to repair the East coast’s rent
Gamete swimming
up-stream searching for the safety of a mate
The sea takes,
places erodes builds changes satisfies its’ needs
Dictating terms
that man can only heed, obey or suffer
Yesterday, today, tomorrow
never the same, constantly changing so as never the same.

-Tony Walker

Through Hell

You’ve been through hell
But outwardly nobody can tell
You look confident and strong
But in your heart you just want to belong
Your mind keeps saying they are all reading you wrong

You’ve picked yourself up more times than you care to count
You’ve survived more that most will ever have to surmount
Yet you see yourself as flawed and weak
As someone who have no right to love and support seek
Instead of seeing how your experiences have made you unique

I know you are ready to give up
That you’ve started to fear each sunup
But I’m here to let you know
You can this darkness to outgrow
That your indomitable spirit shines with a blinding glow

Yourself is the only one you need to forgive
Not anyone who’s been abusive
You’ve been taught to see yourself as wrong
But you are brave and bold and strong
You are worthy of love and to belong

But you have to let your walls down just a little bit
You have to acknowledge how badly you’ve been hurt and hit
You have to let trustworthy people in
Needing others is human, not a sin
Then your new life can truly begin

-©RedCat

A Child born During the Pestilence

(Inspired by Jane Cornwell’s 26th Painting)

I spin an Alice alternative
for you, dear child on my lap.
You have a shortbread biscuit.
You have one manatee doll.
You have nowhere to go and
no one else to meet but us.
In a normal time you may have
gone to the playfield, and
I may have leaned against the net,
watched your progress
as you grow in jump-cuts step by step.
I hold you, tell you, this is a time of all
alternative tales, era of pestilence,
and I hold you dear; in the lore
we find a rabbit hole to suck back into the past.

-Kushal Poddar

Nine of Wands

A priest or scribe since the dawn of civilization
I have spent each turn of this karmic wheel
In deeds of word and spirit, not strength and action

Maybe that’s why I am always at the end of my tether
My flesh is frail, a mere vessel
Maybe that’s why I make myself so resolute

Each of these lines is a wand, a staff, a stylus I grip
Beneath galaxies, in a galaxy, feet on earth
Head in clouds but eyes firm I face everything. Even rebirth.

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

The Way He Loves
(inspired by JC26)

The gentleness begins in his eyes,
In the way he gazes at a small child
Patiently
Reverently
It comes to life in his hands,
In the way he touches gifts of nature
Carefully
Tenderly
It resides in the core of his heart
In the way he loves
Fiercely
Entirely

-Susan Richardson

Apparition

Alone in the desert,
the clear night air raised bumps
on his unfeeling skin. His eyes
were raised, a billion sparkling
stars ignored.

His only focus was the comet,
screaming in an endless vacuum,
propelled without purpose,
not even instinct. Flicked into motion,
crossing the frontier.

The nine wands, painstakingly
inverted in the hard ground, seemed
to gleam in the moon’s half light.
They said that it would bypass
Earth, as far removed

as the aircraft he saw leaving trails
in the hot blue skies. But he knew
that there was more to the Universe
than Science, and the wands would
bring it to him.

Here, to this spot. Soon.

-Tim Fellows

When you were
inspired by Jane Cornwell

You don’t remember how you were
when she was too tiny to play
big-boy games, and you would be rough
and muddy from outside games,
breathless and red, with gentle hands,

and she would smile her baby smile,
front teeth already grey from falls
trying to follow you around.

You called her Ballisto
and played rockets with her
and rolling on the floor,
noise games with anything
that rang shrilled bleeped.

You were puppies from the same litter
and now both grown
she has started a litter of her own.

I wonder, will those rockets
and stars and silly noisy songs
fall from their orbit of memory
into your wondering smile?

-Jane Dougherty

Nine of Wands

upright, cradles a baby in its arms.
Every time spent, every close hug,
is marram grass holding Spurn against harm
of waves. Every wand breaks water’s tug.

Reversed, bairn has no arms, no cradle rock.
Abandoned .No time spent. Forced to fend. Nowt
holds the spit together so separate life stops,
It is part energy of ocean’s clout.

Chance is for our times of dark confusion.
Lucidity challenges delusion.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  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. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.

Day 25

April Showers

-Kerfe Roig

Sparrowhawk

-John Law

-Jane Cornwell

Liminals

I have swum out deep. The only sound
is the bow-wave moltening away

from my hands, folding tonguelesss
phonemes. I’ll never capture that lilt

in our language of unliquid, of hard
mouth shapes. I fear I’ll never capture

many things. I am strongest
stroking somewhere between breast

and crawl, and to everything that belongs
out here surely I’m the thing caught

between states. Not swimmer, not floater.
Pushed upward by water, weighed down

by air, no longer fish but still wearing
the shapes of fins as he lurches terribly

along, and quite unable
to stay dry – look at him, always leaking

something. There’s a colour that hums
between blue and green. You never see it anywhere

but right here, looking down
through the glass and miles from everywhere.

It’s neither, it’s both. It fills you up
to the gills with peculiar

desire – to blur the line there
until you’ve no clue which way is up.

-Ankh Spice

Change

Sun, snow. Sun, hail. Sun, rain.
It’s like nature itself is unsure if it’s ready for the change.
Ready to take that final leap.
Let go of the old and embrace a new season.

Smile, tears. Hope fears.
Between what was and what will be.
Unwilling to go back, unsure where to go next.
Endless labyrinths of ruminations.

What if? What then? When?
Dare to leap without knowing the end.
With only a faint hope of new friends.
Sure the broken needs to mend.

Sun, smile. Rain, tears.
Living change gives fickle weather.
Staying in between you’ll wilt altogether.
Seasons change forever and forever.

Sun, snow. Sun, hail. Sun, rain.
Change is loss and gain.
Smile, tears. Hope, fears.
Change both hurts and heals.
What if? What then? When?
Change is how to write a new end.

-©RedCat

The Persistence of Pat Boone Petrichor Pestilence

(Inspired by Kerfe Roig’s 25th Painting – April Shower)

The déjà vu of an April shower blesses
my ghost-bleeding ears;
I listen to the rain hitting our
garden gazebo I have been
thinking to build for several years
and for another decade I shall do so
before it will cease to matter;
the pitter-patter intones in Pat Boone mode.

The grey, green and the blue,
and one dragonfly’s solitaire
on the grass blade quavering,
it is hard not to believe on the earth’s promise,
imagine this as a mere memory’s flash message.

I flare my nostril for some petrichor, and instead
it sniffs decay of one long ephemeral pestilence.

-Kushal Podddar

April Shower

I hear the breeze rise through the woods
where, in other years, you would have walked.

I listen for the haunting notes that followed you
but nothing drifts across the April air. I wonder

if you still play, your lips on that thin reed;
your breath, enclosed in maple, ready to vibrate

and pull me, like an entranced snake
through the house into the white-walled room;

your eyes closed, fingers moving on their own
and me, alone with just an empty chair.

A sudden squall has brought the April rain
and drives me to the cover of the trees

I watch it splash in puddles, see it drip
from spring’s new leaves, washing you away.

-Tim Fellows

Inspired by all three artworks

Spring Symphony

of bassoon and flute,
the double-tonguing of the sparrowhawk, the reedy robin trill—
the tap tap tap tap tap
of woodpecker snare-drumming—pause–a half note rest—

Now, April showers of marimba and harp.
then strumming, humming,
plunking, singing—allegro, with spirit—

house lights down, soft spotlight
for the sweet lullaby of the moon.

-Merril D Smith

Inspired by JL25 on 25 April

Ora e sempre resistenza

The hawk sits high, undisturbed.
The chill April breeze is its driving force
as it falls
like freedom
from the skies.

The rats again will scatter
dark starbursts
into the hedgerows into the drains.

The eye of the hawk
the power of the people
the rats will never taste triumph again.

-Simon Williams

Buttercups

These April showers of buttercup gold,
the sky that flows into running stream,
and grass lush as waterweed, seep and soak,

rooted where the river runs,
seeded where the clouds
sweep their trailing locks.

Earth, sky, water join in this light,
beneath the spread-boughed trees,
dappled and stream-spangled,

singing with a thousand throats,
drawing up the buttercups
to catch the falling drops of sun.

-Jane Dougherty

KR 25 – April Showers

April showers

I want to be a different man
I think to myself as summer
Soaks shirt to skin
Fills the day with guilt and sloth

I want a different life, a different name
I think to myself as summer
Wilts my spine, my heart
Leaves emptied of all other thoughts

I need a better alibi
I think to myself as summer
Brings skies to boil
And thoughts to a standstill

I am the same man, but new
I think to myself as April
Soaks shirt to skin
Fills the day with respite, with rebirth.

-Jayprakash Satyamurthy

Songbird
(inspired by JC25)

The first note hovers
A petal on the spring breeze
I raise my face to the sky
An eager songbird
Perched on the tip of my tongue

-Susan Richardson

Sparrowhawk

is a young woman playing bassoons tone,
is a watercolour that drips April
showers, is her fingerwork, and gusts blown
through her lips, her sparrowhawk gaze fills

air with music, her focus drills our heads,
blends tones and colours into talons grip
and beak demolishes resistance dead.
Moon won’t share fire so sparrowhawk steals it.

The old god’s oak grown from a murdered man’s
grave hawk sat in its branches tells his tale
agile as deep bassoon notes, sharply plans
It’s flap, glide, till over hedge beak impales.

Warrior to its core, catches food on
the wing, or tunes or brush tones with vision.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  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. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.

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