Open doors can mean
Opportunity, but
Following yellow
Brick roads often
Leads to more unknowns, and
Darkness behind doors
Ajar, can be worrisome –
Consuming, until it’s
Hard to tell the
Difference between
Brick and mortar reality, and
Fictional curiosity.
I turn away, not wanting
(Because I’m not wanting)
To squander this moment,
For the sake of expectation.
-st
Red Asylum oct 2019.
Alone with my thoughts
I park the car
and climb the
stubborn slopes
to my childhood.
Up Cockett Hill
to the Red Asylum.
I glance down
for a glimpse of my
child knees, not there.
Water tower and chimney
shoulders tight,
stark upon that hill.
A land marked Swansea bay.
Now a conglomeration
of housing,
cul-de-sacs
to a builder’s greed.
And our house
a creation
of the same
victorian red brick.
Rotted no value left
save for the slugs
and other denizens
of damp places.
A wet ruin is left
turned to a wisp,
as insubstantial as
my early memories.
Through the letterbox
sits a sad hall, mould
wet and pleading.
Listen for my mother’s voice
but its not there,
not even an echo.
A little life, unravelling.
Old damp letters
circle the mat.
My family’s absence,
this random cruelty. A
product of my time.
Once I was a child here
with a cat that purred,
I thought it was
a lion roaring.
And outside, those dark
woods that I remember.
Just six pine trees, dying.
The door of my heart
is open
and I cannot close it.
The door of my heart
is open to the wind:
a sanctuary of winter silence.
The door of my heart
is open to the sea;
oceans pass
in and out
like breath.
I know
I am broken:
the fire gone to embers,
almost drowned in the cold.
I am waiting.
I will always be waiting
for you to come
into the circle of my arms;
into the circle of my heart.
I cannot forget
your heat on my skin,
your voice in my ear.
The steady beat of your heart
under my hand.
Deep in arctic waters
embers flare.
This is a fire
that can never be drowned.
The door of my heart is open.
-Yvonne Marjot
Phoenix Rising
Red my searing childhood trauma from vicious
weak needy bullies who channelled their pathetic
insecurities onto my face my body my race my inner
sanctum invaded – I still hear their jealous raucous
laughter trying to impress their gargoyle minions
and their poisonous euphoria for seemingly gaining
more followers mocking and jeering point scoring.
The marks they gifted me are unseen yet it drags me
sometimes down their demon alleyways but they know
I cannot stay as I have something they still crave for
in my loving family glow keeping their gnashing baying
away – I now soar above their darkened memories
only their former essence still reaching out sometimes
haunting my dreamscape visions but as always I burn
their hot rod verbal darts away as I rise higher to battle
each and every challenging day trying my best to still
find my way in this life but they continue to throw
boulders my way.
I have just managed to release all my haunting bitter
Memories and I am better now my confidence lasting –
For I am Phoenix rising…
-Don Beukes
avalon
colorizing slums
does not erase black and white
spirit-killing want
-Rich Follett
*
With the motion of white feathers.
and visiting hours, and the stench,
you said, of tomato feed left in the sun, and the feeling, pickling salt
between my fingers, each morning left on the side
and wondering what was left for us and
knew, at the same time – only salt,
only pain.
-Alex Mazey
Shelter
At the end of the street, that field
eye-high with weeds – a sanctuary
for lost horses. Sad horses were snapped crayons
to country kids, but the bones
of the old villa, also haunting that field – pure myth.
In one room, ectoplasm: the huge pale ghost
of a moulded plaster ceiling, turned to dust. You spoke
to me only because I always had some limb
or another in a cast, which meant gruesome
and intriguing, so I was not unlike the lure
of a derelict house, and the plaster cast I fashioned
from ghosts and rainwater for you was heavy
and convincing. In a thing abandoned, the weight
of the fear it will happen again lives deep
in the struts. You coveted what was broken
more than once, and I pretended your Dad
was mine even when he was shouting
about your arm. It was one of many bargains
we didn’t voice, a couple of mouths busy grazing, beasts
unshod and unclaimed. I heard you never escaped
that town, and never broke a thing.
I never went back, and I don’t know
what would be worse – a new house
sitting whole on a grave
or a completely empty field
with not a horse in sight.
-Ankh Spice
herrison.
his name is geoff with a g
not jeff with a j
was on the seat beside me
travelling to dorset
i tried to be good and quiet
yet
outside dorchester i exclaimed again, he smiled
pardon me, did you say herrison?
i did
i blushed, did not explain
closed now, shut down rotten
i went back once over the fence
it was empty dusted done
memory remains of visits
by train and special bus to alight
where patients waited
where on sunday patients paraded
to church
where i was horrified, terrified
where her head split in two
she tooks them pills constantly
sometimes too many
my brother lived away
my brother signed her over
committing her to that place
instead of st anns
we were used to that
now
my brother has dementia
he is probably dying
the roundabout is called monkey jump
-sonja benskin mesher
We Stop Decay
devote lives to prevent decay
of wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our minds,
faculties of our hearts
Each day we weed, we resow,
rework, rebuild
the wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our hearts,
faculties of our minds.
Laugh to heal the stench
of rot, worm eaten
brick, bone, breath, wood
landscape of flesh
fresh produce of light.
Born to decay in decay
heal the ever opening wound
brick, bone, breath, wood
flesh of landscape
light produce of flesh.
Laugh.
-Paul Brookes
cento
Brick and mortar reality, and
a couple of mouths busy grazing.
Heal the ever opening wound.
Once I was a child here
with a cat that purred,
I thought it was
a lion roaring.
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.
Echoes of regret weaving a widening
tightening net in my brittle porous psyche
bouncing off unstable walls in the hollow halls
of hurried pocketed memories meant to remain
hidden but that is not a given as I urgently attempt
to suppress decaying regrets doing my best to stay
afloat in my secret sheltered harbour where I am
commander and master electing to sail or drown
in wailing gales of deepening untreated depression
with only my fading reflection as a fellow passenger
to endear to as I have no more trusted confidantes
nor allies to maybe expect a reassuring hug maybe
even just a brief passing touch of support in this
broken moral compass world we now live in, so
I just lie down in an imagined embrace –
My self-esteem in pieces my worth leaking out
as I listen to soothing phantom Whispers…
The Bees are Dead
Fading flowers signalling a worrying neglect
of nature’s gifts to our species but our kind not
that kind to our existential nourishing life-giving
necessities – We just take it for granted to have
continuous uninterrupted access to our culinary
needs but how can we possibly allow a decline
in responsibly tending to our flora and fauna in
our mad race to build the biggest, construct the
tallest, creating the most award winning concrete
jungles, expanding urban megacities whilst
removing nature’s bounty?
Deforestation annihilation the destruction of fauna
Migration to natural kingdoms in which to multiply
and thrive but the bees are dead the flowers wilting
the rivers disappearing our food sources diminishing
due to our irresponsible neglect our insatiable
need to destroy or change the status quo whilst
bowing down to corporate powers puppet shows
guiding our disappearing moral compass steering –
I cry as I yearn for common sense to prevail
but maybe it is too late as the bees are dead…
-Don Beukes
Gardening with B. F. Skinner and St. Bede
To look at a human face and perceive a black box
is a philosopher’s way of saying ‘what flies through the lighted room
between your ears is unknowable to me’. But there I go already
mixing my philosophers and my monks. The point of the black box
is that it is lightless from the outside looking in, and I can’t ever imagine
being so closed down that no face held a candle up to the eyes – no
lambent glow left flickering in the window
to guide the traveller home, to indicate a hearth to share.
So I’m still thinking about all of you as rooms,
and inside the conservatory that I am, there are petals
all over the floor. A bird rushed through the hydrangeas
I keep in here just yesterday, and now all the soft colours we wrap
our children tightly with, those same ones that label
the boxes before we can philosophise or parable at all,
are drifting deep. And maybe my subconscious chose those flowers
for this room because they’re a litmus.
Don’t you want to see what’s going on
underneath in the dark, where all the growing really happens –
who’s hurting acid, who’s blanding base. Can’t you see
that the light beacons in and out
through bird-shaped holes in the walls, and if you look
at a person without thinking about boxes
sometimes you find a garden
telling you what it needs the most.
-Ankh Spice
Après-fête
partygoers gone,
weary lawn goes back to work:
confetti concedes
-Rich Follett
Ekphrasis 290520
Breath of spring wind
caressing my skin with fingers
cooler than water.
Feeling you so close.
Am I alone with you now,
or just by myself?
Poignant memory,
stops my heart for a moment:
your voice in my ear.
-Yvonne Marjot
Soul Sunrise
“Weeping may last for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” -Ps. 30:5
Lavender lilac
Petals fall from
The past
On dusty
Dirt roads and
Brittle dry grass.
The spring wind
That carries the
Scent of the years,
Becomes memory and
Mourning and
Sentimental tears.
Evening dark
Frees the senses to
Rise with the moon.
Night is relief,
Depth, release –
Bringing forth new.
-st
Newtonian Fluid
As I birth, so I draw
this first breath
through my reflection,
no features yet.
No memory to spoil.
Newtonian forces
ripple the fluid
that holds all,
in divine tension.
To wonder aloud,
alone and pointless,
as if in
a dream or yet now
awake.
Like Alice pulled,
then stretched long.
From the mirror
to the looking glass room.
As her old times cling
distorting memories,
of her left behind world.
Once stories and
dreams ran freely,
before language gripped
and took our sight.
Wondering at last,
near death
what if, and
will the dream
continue alone.
The remnants lie in
stranger’s eyes,
a leaf that blows
all wrong.
A thing that cannot be,
a dream detection.
this is not confetti
not a wedding for these are not permitted
we cannot see each other face to face yet
nor marry
we must live alone on lockdown
flowers
sbm.
*
I remember growing an herb garden in your mother’s garden, and one
morning, finding white feathers. You told me, then, angels were near,
and I thought about every incremental – angels and God, and small
hands digging the cold earth, the rose bush, and the clay, and every
forgotten car park, walked between the sign posts, faded in long grass.
Once stood in a puddle of water, and looking up at the blue sky, saw
the blue holding something out of place, the motions of white feathers.
-Alex Mazey
Obscurity
Is looking in the mirror
To see a formless face
Who am I
To think I am someone
Who matters
In a world that cares not
But I desire
To be seen if only by
Just a few
Perhaps then the image
In the mirror
Becomes the person
I can believe in
-Carrie Anne Golden
The Face
the petals of a flower
expressionless without wrinkles
crisps in the sun,
laughter lines increase
sheds colourful skin after skin,
gusts make them wings,
energy returns to the bulb
There is always next year.
-Paul Brookes
cento
Brittle dry grass.
Don’t you want to see what’s going on.
There is always next year.
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.
Rising protesting urban tired voices collectively
announcing shared smouldering frustrations
red hot emotions surging steadily to the surface
whilst in secret shady alleys a growing army
of protesters march in unison – Their steps
echoing flat-lining as it reaches a choking city
strangled by social stagnation in this shadow
nation where political fat cats slurp up burnt
left over bitter molasses – Their spoils from
prolonged corruption denying their part in
destroying a nation’s heart whilst pretending
it was all done in good spirit but their gargoyle
eyes reflect their burnt out lies!
Anger boiling over emotions flaring revolution
stirring igniting a ravishing existential fire
below in this charred charcoal urban halo…
Still Here
Historical halo still illuminating our inner
moral compass despite our forced hindrance
to conform follow the norm remain silent ‘Yes
sir no ma’am me sir please ma’am’ – No
violence scream in silence, yet our common
sense still rage within as we pass our past scars
daily in urban shadows only mural concrete echoes
chronicling our attempts to change the status quo
revive our intended blood flow but only fractions
remain of our liberty dance now mere urban
legend frescoes in sleazy shadows as if we have
never lit up the skies to try and kill forced
lies from authoritarian clowns even now the
midnight crow still mock their pathetic show
so we will persist and resist as we are still
here in huddled numbers maintaining our
continuing necessary monitoring…
-Don Beukes
..utility..
anyway, dave, over here, we had rationing as you know,
which continued afterward. things had to be simple,
saving stuff and time, and had a mark like two hungry birds.
utility mark
summer winds scattering paper
cut with a ruler, smudged and marked.
tearing the words, categorising,
knowing
it is all worth it in the end.
you would be surprised
torn paper can be fish
or hungry birds
dave
-sbm.
*
Once had a student who wanted to learn English, maybe as another help,
a mother with fruits and vegetables on the docks of another bay. Good
mornings spent pacing the wooden slats of the seafront, recounting numbers
and colours, and the names of things she already knew. Had a student who,
after homework and dinner had been addressed, sold water to cooing tourists
at a newspaper stand with his grandfather, maybe wouldn’t work long hours
above the wooden slates – with another help, the reoccurrence of each sun.
-Alex Mazey
Soon Gibbous
Unglazed crescent.
Fear your light should
fall from grace, through
crystal panes.
In early night
blue, an electric,
sharp as any knife.
A promise has arisen
from the middle east, as
desert sands softly glow.
Soon to be gibbous,
not yet full.
Celestial forevers
and on its tail,
Venus the even-star,
sister of the morning.
Cold luminosity
exotic geometry
hung in a childhood’s sky,
and there in rheumy eyes.
Without it why
would I loose a
lycanthrope’s howl.
Or grassland to blood
outside my bars.
Far ocean panting as it
licks the shore,
amorphous too big
for a beast.
Something unnatural
about this moon.
Born spilling red
and silvered fear.
Sizzling
on my counterpane.
I am fear of failure,
And satisfaction of success.
I am the painting and
The canvass –
The rising moon and stars,
But also the setting sun.
-st
Hathor’s gift
Last night you called me from the bottom of a well
and I pictured the signal between us as a rope ladder
woven from a bunch of years. A bit frayed, this connection,
and this metaphor, but both holding together just enough
for you to see the ladder just a little bit more clearly
than you were seeing the rope. And I don’t care if we’ve not spoken
since before the world cracked its lid, I’m just grateful
I look like some kind of stick when the alligators find the ass.
Often it’s hard to respect the tree in someone who’s fallen
in a quiet, intolerant forest, over and over,
and when you’re soft wood, well. Did you know that Hathor
kicked out the crocodile god even though she was
at least partly a cow. I bet they underestimated just how fierce
a prey animal waxes when her herd is in the dark
and feeling the closing teeth. I bet they underestimated her
even after she teamed up with the sun
and gored the darkness of her loved ones on the tips
of her kind, soft horns. Stabbed it until it was striped
with secondhand light, then drowned it
in the milk of inhuman kindness.
-Ankh Spice
moderne extempore
layered opinions,
shameless promotional shards:
accidental art
-Rich Follett
History
is a wall of torn posters
we walk past as it is only part
messages in foreign languages
we struggle to comprehend.
There was no Golden Age
of good food, good living,
good government. Only in our
imagination the posters
are not torn. the messages are clear.
We do not pass them by
but stand and read into the gaps.
We reinvent the occasion.
-Paul Brookes
Cento
I am the painting and
far ocean panting as it
licks the shore,
amorphous too big
for a beast.
We struggle to comprehend
I bet they underestimated her.
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.
I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers three options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger, or an interview about their latest book, or a combination of these.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.
Carrie Anne 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
I have found that writing poetry was the best way of expressing myself as a woman and as a creative. It is very cathartic for my soul that I can never get enough!
2. Who introduced you to poetry?
Although I was really introduced to poetry via school as a girl, it was a coworker many years later who re-introduced me. Through her, I learned about National Poetry Writing Month (in 2008) which I tried and became “addicted” to writing poetry.
3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?
I was never truly aware until very recently.
4. What is your daily writing routine?
Pre-COVID19 the mornings were my time to write since I had the house all to myself. Now, with my guys home all the time, I try to squeeze it in whenever I can.
5. What motivates you to write?
Characters and stories motivate me. If I don’t get them out of my head, I’d go insane!
6. What is your work ethic?
I’m usually too laid back to stick to a strict schedule. As long as I am creating something each day or as often as I can, I’m happy! Deadlines usually stress me out however at times they are the only way to get me to focus and complete a project.
7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?
I read a lot of horror and supernatural books as a girl so I guess these had a hand in the kind of stuff I like to write.
8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?
I love Terry Brooks’ books. Although he tries to keep a set writing schedule, he spends a lot of his time in a hammock outside losing himself in his imagination and daydreams.
9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?
Writing comes more naturally yet at the same time it is the most difficult thing to do. The feeling I get each time I create something nothing else matches it!
10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”
In order to become a writer all you need to do is pick up a pen and write words on the paper. Don’t worry about anything else just write what comes to mind.
11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.
I have two projects at the moment. One – I’m using poetry as a tool for writing my first memoir. Two – I’m in the process of writing a disaster-creature book called Terror From the Deep. The third one is actually a guilty please that I’m dong for myself a fantasy/scifi story involving magic and apocalyptic events that is set in an alternate dimension (the story is called Armageddon’s Race).
“The mountains were so wild and so stark and so very beautiful that I wanted to cry.” Jane Wilson-Howarth, Snow-fed Waters
there has always been the wind and on that day
it was pewter, playing tag with afternoon clouds,
but dawn was as clear as window glass and
the distant Sangre de Cristo Mountains were
the lost backdrop to my old cellular visions and
the subject of fine artists, though none to be seen
galleries were hung with signs “gone fishing,”
so we sat on a rough bench to eat our churros,
held mugs of champurrado, sweet and foamy,
stayed to see the sun setting at that far point
were the trees appear sparse and the highest
peaks showed themselves, symbols of promise
we waited to see the earth curl around sky’s soft edge, somewhere…
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.
Photograph courtesy of 
The Wombwell Rainbow 