January 30th, 2021 And Thou Shalt Judge The Expiring Soccer Mom after Servant, Season Two, Episode Three, Pizza Surveil from silk sheets your mortal estate.On suburban streets, death, afterlife viebehind grandiose gates. Above play dates,teammates, cheese pizza parties, skeletonize with the greatest of ease. Caretakers dozein proximate chairs. Delicate wraithtiptoes upstairs in prim servant’s clothes with bowls […]
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms This episode aired on 30th January 2021 and I was joined by poets Phil Vernon, Cathy Carson, Barbara Mercer and A.R. Salandy. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below… Phil Vernon is on […]
-Entanglement- Ground grows up through usvoice fills the wrist, fingersfeather wind as it turns leavesreading a text that inches outto branch tip, leaping into flight. Form is not shape, not the billetsplit from stave, when you bindthese wounds what emerges is notwinged lacerations, when you bindthese words this form remembers flame,her hands fill with ash […]
A summer in spring, confused flora and fauna, a summer suspended early, flowers buds deep in earth, interred as autumn reds, gold scarred dead leaves of burnished browns a harvest of fruit and berries unoffered glaciered infernos, carbon foot on planet Earth fossilised, as man strives to reach outer space horizons blink in wild rage as sun, moon, stars dip into the sea, neither morning nor night a midnight within a midnight.
-Leela Soma
Strange, Weird and Twisted
Strange rooms shrouded in gloom Weird sounds echoing in tune Twisted hallways leading to doom
Strange sights searing the eyes Weird thoughts rapidly flashing by Twisted emotions a chorus of cries
Mirror-worlds where fairies dwell in always-green, but in-between, in that center line, humans live with paler hues
unable to see vibrant shades or beyond space and time, defined in narrow bands—birth death, and then the end.
But there he fell, and she caught him— beautiful Fairy Queen. “Stay,” says she, but no, he wants home and family.
So, he runs, bumbles, stumbles, from the wondrous fairy place of green and dancing flowers, because he senses–knows
beneath the glow, snapping teeth snarl and bite, and huge monsters, alligator crawl, slither from swamps, over walls–
it is not the place for humans. Our hearts must wake in that center line axis of earth, sun, moon; we need smiles
and tears to fall, but light always behind the shadows tall and looming. We’re mortal, but love everlasting.
-Merril D Smith
Spectacle-Face-Phase – MD31
The ears and nose have a lot to do to hold the glasses for vision true. Focus here, focus there, ignore the rim when you stare. Clean, clear glasses to show the eyes detail. Aura and vivid colours materialize.
Is this just a fashion ? Am I going through a phase ? Or will I have to wear them for the rest of my days ? I`ll book the optician, see what he says.
30,Ja,2021 for the thirty-first of. -Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Michael Dickel.
CO31
Guide at Veuve Clicquot
Slide the saber along the body seam to the lip to break the top of the neck away leaving the neck open, ready to pour.
On each step was inscribed a vintage year in this place where chalk had once been quarried leaving an absence later filled by the presence
of champagne. We followed her short skirt, high heels, Hermès scarf draped just so up from the labyrinth cellar to the room
where our tongues would feel the tiny bubble bursts. At home we might have dropped in raisins, to watch them bounce in celebration.
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life. There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
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.
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.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
In her dark mind towering thunderheads Better to break than to abuse conform Sparkling dreams and fragile dreams beaten dead
No pink dawn breaking to be seen ahead The sky full of bruised clouds aching to storm In her dark mind towering thunderheads
Starved, strangled passion bleeding out blood-red No space for dreams outside the prescribed norm Sparkling dreams and fragile dreams beaten dead
Clinging to sanity by a thin thread Stuck screaming unheard in protective form In her dark mind towering thunderheads
Trapped in a black vortex of clawing dread Demons, nightmares and evil spirits swarm Sparkling dreams and fragile dreams beaten dead
Shivering cold in a lonely blue bed Dreaming of being held in embrace warm In her dark mind towering thunderheads Sparkling dreams and fragile dreams beaten dead
A propos of nothing really, I just wanted to put this here for artists, art-lovers and anyone interested in contemporary painting. Lucie Geffré is from Bordeaux (like me and Odilon Redon) and I think her work is pretty fantastic. https://www.luciegeffre.com/
A lovely neighbour brought over the gift of a bowl of hyacinths when the year was brand new, and now, in the very last weekend of January, three pale yellow flowers have bloomed gloriously and our hallway is filled with a sweet and spicy scent that we have grown to appreciate (we weren’t sure, at […]
I dream of water– tiny sea-tongues lick and spray the rocks, and purple shadows prance; a sparkle-dance, in blue expanse, the gulls’ wings in white flutter.
From a red boat, the laughter floats, turns clouds to golden-yellow flowers.
And if the wind whispers, what do you want? I’d say all this– and a thousand pink-petalled springs, the light of peace, and you.
My collaborative poem with the Magnetic Poetry Oracle and Odilon Redon. The Oracle seems to be in a good mood today.
The Wombwell Rainbow 