-Nevvaeh Ashcroft (one of Paul Brookes granddaughters)

The Calm

You want to be with Grandad?

my wife says as granddaughter exits her arms
and nestles in the pillow of my chest,
coddled in my arms
that do not let her fall
from my lap,
sobs, her little heart beats
ratatattat on my chest.
My daughter, her mother says,

She knows where calmness is.

-Paul Brookes

A GRANDMOTHER’S SORROW

Locked up in the attic three empty cribs rot as they rock,
Ruffled cot blankets with frayed edges curled up in sorrow
No innocent babies chewing at monogrammed corners……

A teddy bear, stuffing escaping, slumps down in a corner
Exhausted from waiting, his once golden fur bald with age,
Hoping soft fingers will hold him just once more with love

A Hornby train rests at the station, awaiting assignments,
Freight wagons coupled, the station clock stopped at eleven
Passengers idling on benches immersed in a time -warp…

“Cuckoo, peek-a-boo” shouts the undaunted cuckoo each hour,
“Cuckoo, come on, little ones, time to get up now and play!”
His entreaties are met with an ominous, deafening silence
And the cradles keep rocking and rotting away in despair.

Unfinished knitting lies strewn on the old nursery table,
Pink and blue jumpers, white bootees and cute little hats,
Crafted in faith by a grandmother eager for child-care
But cast aside tear-stained, following years of false hope……..

Her face bears a smile though her heart is weighed down with despair
Inner guilt screams that she should have done more ….. but too late!
The cradles keep rocking and rotting away in their grief.

©️ Margaret Royall

THE EMPTY NEST – a triolet

Oh, how I long for just one day
Of loving time with family!
Alas, they now live far away
Oh, how I long for just one day
A chance to laugh and chat and play
And let our inner child break free
Oh, how I long for just one day
Of loving time with family!

It’s not their fault, their lives are stressed
They’ve little time to think of me
For them I always do my best
It’s not their fault, their lives are stressed
They’ve grown, matured and flown the nest
My challenges they do not see
It’s not their fault, their lives are stressed
They’ve little time to think of me

And yet, I know they love me still
I’ll love them till eternity
Their heartfelt hugs warm up my chill
And yes, I know they love me still
To chat with them is such a thrill
But when they call do they hear ME?
And yes, I know they love me still
I’ll love them till eternity

©️Margaret Royall

Give Birth Every Day

I’ve seen the childless
Mother their friends,
A granddaughter,
Mother her grandma.
There are black mommies
Who mother white children, and vice-versa.

And, sometimes, moms for many reasons
Can’t seem
To mother their own.
It’s true some women’s wombs grow
Babies, but all women’s
Tender-acts grow souls.
-ST

Art work WELCOME HOME by my grand children Sana Fatima Mir Rayyan Sara Fatima and Mir Abdullah

Family Love the Natural Bond

My four grand children aged between 11 and 5, quietly took up paper and color pencils and while we waited for the landing of the plane coming in from Europe via the Middle East they put up their way of showing their love for ‘Maamu’ -(Mama’s brother is known as Maamu’). All the kids were fast asleep when ‘Maamu came home in the early hours, but the “Welcome” poster was lovingly posted on the door of his room. Family love is always the strongest natural bond .

-Anjum Wasim Dar, Rawalpindi City Pakistan 2013

January 22nd

-Kerfe Roig “Moonsea”

-Christine O’Connor

-Marcel Herms “Words do matter”

Kr22 moonsea 1/22

If They Can Put a Man on the Moon…

The earth is as blue as an orange.
The moon is as dimpled as a golf ball.
I float in levity not in gravity.
Old Glory on my sleeve is upside-down.
Distress! Three shadow fingers point
to the sand dollar in the center
with its Christ symbols front and back.
The barrier must be broken, though,
before the doves of peace inside will fly.

-Holly York

In through the cracks (CO22)

The window leaks creativity today
Shapes drawn in the sky, in the dust;
we don’t discriminate. Today we are
punk, we are modern: skeins of colour
waiting for needles to make us whole.
Our collections are eclectic; we focus
energy in bright spots, in sudden waves.
You may not believe in all the things
we can achieve. Look how flawed
our arguments, how loosely we hang
together. You find us nebulous, far-fetched.
You are double-breasted, coated
with praise, accessorised with money.
But all of us are patched up; even you
have your snags. Our strength is in our outfit.
We combine to get attention, to cover
each other. Where is your shellac now?
We have stolen your only flash of colour
and glued it to our creation. Our prints
are all over your designs. Our motto: Be. Wear.

-Hilary Otto

Bios And Links

-Kerfe Roig

responding to

KR “Moonsea” and CO22

An Astronaut Speaks from the Moon

Was there once color in your dust and shadows,
did a sea of turquoise and cobalt dance in ripples
to shimmer, prismed, like stained glass, vibrant-hued
in the light of stars, and sun, and Earth—

I saw it rising
blue above your horizon, the color of dreams,
of sky and sea, but here–
here, it is the color of awe
and yearning. It is the color of home.

-Merril D Smith

Moonsea – KR22

Look at the Moon; that’s where I want to go.
We can build a ship and aim for Tycho.
Go through the void: a whisker from hell.
Soar over Terra Sanitatis if all goes well.

Soak up the Tranquility.
Feel the Serenity
and have a good gawp at Mons Usov geology.
Maria, step away from the Terminator.

21,Ja,2021(Moon phase: First Quarter, in Taurus) for the twenty-second of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.

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/

-Christine O’Connor

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.

Christine O'Connor

-Marcel Herms

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.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

=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.

-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  

Educational Consultant by Profession. 

Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..

In Grandma’s Garden

Old, gnarled trees give hugs.
Roses smell of antiseptic.
Especially when you’ve grazed
your knees. Dew is a sloppy kiss
And leaves a red mark.

Her arguments with Grandad
Are unmown grass, unweeded borders,
Magnolia bushes that need a prune,
Daisies between the cracks of flagstones.
My pocket money is her laughter.

Gradually even the raised beds
Need a hired gardener. She sits
In a white plastic chair at a white plastic
Table on the patio flagged by her son in law
And granddaughter and says
I’m going to have to move.
That sun is in my eyes.
-Paul Brookes

The fallen Escurel

Fear glare shock of leaping slip,
upper body twisted shovel flat
instinct power kicks hind legs
to distance human path. Dog scent

desperation heaves , burrows head
in mounded litter leaves, camouflage
of mottled grey. Luscious auburn tail
is splayed against the sanctuary heights.

Teeth gnaw at the buried roots
clinging as the surefoot limbs to bark.
Dimming life pulse fades to dark.

-Val Anderson

SCIURUS VULGARIS
The Plight of the Red Squirrel

Pinecone clutched adeptly between his paws, he hesitates,
ears quivering, alert for a predatory fox or a swooping goshawk.
Danger lurks unseen within this innocent sylvan landscape.
Concealed by the dense tree canopy, a stealthy pine marten
Waits to pounce and crush the fragile bones, strip bare the russet coat.
Reaction must be swift, his tail balancing him perfectly in flight.
High overhead in the tree’s hollow his vulnerable kittens cower
in the patchwork drey of woven twigs, leaves and moss.
Instinctive parental behaviour kicks in. He is their survival.

Recognising a sudden chill in the wind, he scrabbles urgently
among the dying leaves, as autumn makes its last stand.
‘Chuck chuk’, he stamps his feet in bold defiance, eyes darting warily.

His breed shows dwindling numbers year on year,
disappearing from their British haunts.
This is our watch, we cannot ignore the call –
Sciurus Vulgaris looks to man for protection;

Tomorrow may be too late!

-©️ Margaret Royall

Leaving

Leaves fall to their end.
Cold darkens every step.
Naked limbs outstretch.

Untidy trees slough,
abandon clothes all over.
Others clean their mess

Squirrels skitter up,
hold bounty for a nibble.
Stop, look and listen.

Sky looks at itself,
sees scumbled clouds, palette knifed
blue flecked by cold gust.

-Paul Brookes