*

Dominos stacked, threes and fives, in close proximity to a limoncello.
Once fell in love with a hotel secretary, a strong word for limerence,
for all things, ontological systems. The limerence I feel towards every
day things, every day people, a game of threes and fives on a wooden
table, in a bar, somewhere in the world. There are places in this world
where the mountains will give you headaches, drinking water, bottled
water in a vending machine, in a carpark, elsewhere, on a park bench.

=Alex Mazey

Tower 

Wrapped in roots of long ago.
We left our trees for rich alluvial plains.
For millennia we walked the ground,
Now we live in towers and yearn for forests.

©️ Dai Fry 21st May 2020.

urban primeval

leaves are teeth, and bricks—
in a world turned upside down,
everything threatens

-Rich Follett

.scaffold.

Structure

We’re taught
Skeletons are the
Inside of us,
But bones
Were never the real core.
It’s marrow
That contains
The DNA imprint –
Connects bodies to brains,
Holds the shudder of
New beginnings.
Marrow is
Blood, oxygen, more –
Low frequency
Radio-wave energy,
Hot blue flame
Of life.

-st

That Tree

That rambling Bramley never stopped
swelling fruit. That first time you peeled
an apple to make a monkey’s tail of it.
That jaunty spiral, dangling. That monkey
who watched from his clambersome branch
desiring two things equally and at once:
to eat it up sour just as fast as it grew,
to hold his breath to will it longer
and longer, sweetly unsnapped
until the very last turn of the knife.
When the tree lay down exhausted
of fruiting, that knife, it found her too – carved
her skin for those who had visited her living.
You did not carve a monkey.
That mourner. That boy
who could never sit still at all, except rocked
by the wind and entranced
by some small magic. That still and empty wood
that is the body of a loved one. That snap
of the spiral once we stop growing.
That always desiring two things
equally and at once. That sour.
Oh, that sweet.

-Ankh Spice

The Residents

Daylight Blues – A newly married housewife repeating
repetitive chores staring at limited doors to nowhere dreams silent screams reminiscing happier scenes filled with boisterous laughter her voice now muted her worth rather
diminished to expected forced duties or face marital barking from an insecure domineering jealous failing weakling –

Homecoming – I hear him enter but these paper thin walls reveal domestic dark wars from neighbours existing in shadows some not even let out by drunken pathetic weaklings!
I hear her defend herself she’s had enough – A rushed scuffle something hitting the wall, I step back shaken, nauseous.

The Argument – How dare you talk back to me do you really think you are something without me, somehow free?
Shut up get out I have had enough of your acid accusations
your midnight liaisons – I dare you to touch me but you won’t you spineless coward, I know what you really are you make me sick! Your fiery cutting words have no effect anymore so either you leave or I will get my brother to sort you out –
Oh yeah? You really want to take that chance? I dare you hah!

Midnight Echoes – A voice a thump or a lamp falling but what about the muffled calling a hurried whisper – A door banging!
A shot, frozen to the spot liquid legs feet like mud – Should I?
A grinding a dragging floors creaking, oh God what is all this about? A knock! Heavy breathing a thud a scrape what…hello?

-© Don Beukes

Reflections

A partly unfolded
map of reflections.
Green veins.
Stilled into concrete

Every map, every blueprint
a mirror to the explorer.

Shows organs that beat,
Veins, routes towards the beat

Wires electrify inside a scaffold
of bones. So every action
becomes a roadway.

We are our creations.

-Paul Brookes

cento

Hot blue flame

you did not carve a monkey

a mirror to the explorer.

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

<

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

Twilight Asylum

Frozen Eyes – Daily prodding confused nodding
Yes sir no ma’am, ‘You’re not my mother!’ – Look
into my eyes stop fidgeting widen your eyes stop
complaining look up – ‘Shut up I am fed up shut your
trap you old hag!’ Now calm down look this way no
that way are you even still here? Stop fidgeting!

Midnight Lullaby – Nocturnal healing cries soothe
my sore blood shot eyes as the midnight owl echoes
my existential meandering melody of suppressed
forced emotions blamed for defensive contortions
whilst the mocking laughing of a fox unleashes
my lost hoarse voice to violently protest in this
hell-hole confused constrictive nest my inner mess!
I rock myself to sleep as my broken emotions tend
to seep into my darkest demon alley sleep slipping
into the deep branded a confused helpless creep.

Morning Symphony – A bell a voice a familiar knell
a bark from a despised morning lark, ‘Up up no
no messing about mouth open pills down swallow
now, ‘ Fuck off fly off sign out you old bat enough!’
A familiar hypnotising melody booming in the
background in a far corner of the sterile room – A
lonely moaner crying out for attention even just a
brush of human touch but it is not meant for us
as we are drugged and hypnotised in our beloved
cursed twilight asylum sucking in provided helium…

-Don Beukes

*

The liquidation of all referentials, the sediment in a tea pot, tea leaves
peeling away like bright – I don’t want to repeat myself – like tinned
wonton soup. Once bought a tin of wonton soup, and read the label,
out loud, outside, enjoyed the delicate transparency of a clear broth,
and dumpling sriracha – can taste like battery acid, I have been told,
by those who know better, know the Möbius of a straw, a pork bone,
shrimp swimming in a blue tank, behind the white, moulded recliner.

-Alex Mazey

grey
fading
no pattern left
blunt letters

I have posted then many times with
comments on the larger buildings
up the road
decommissioned

in remission

some places come hardy
with time and some sort
of aging

some people come much the same
numbers adding to the years and
experience

are you one of those james
or do you look at the building
the marks
and wonder

say nothing james

this is all a challenge this year

while some are ignored
not explored

you can’t get round the back
there are watchmen and signs

saying, shouting to get back, get back

-sbm.

Next Sepia

In this next age
a sepia dawn will break
and sustain.

End time dust clouds,
shifting umbrae lands.
Now all are
crawlers, gloamers
in twilight sun rays.

First television
then just the sound,
now sometimes
distant radio, deep
far into the brown.

Please-
Some mouldy cheese
or black edged leaf.
The last vitamin D,
piled in quarters.

What was the argument?
Dunno.
Toilet paper, hand sanitiser,
people in old boats.

We let their children drown.
Watched them sink
into our northern seas.

Then a doubter wrapped
in self anger/
poisoned by malaria tablets,
pushed the button.

© Dai Fry 20th May 2020.

Columbarium with Brugmansia

In the quiet silver wind
datura becomes a hardy ghost.
Tendrils black with fleeing light,
Trumpets white as the mushroom-moon,
the only movements here.
Whoever planted that vine
in sorrowing soil by the wall
chose it by commoner’s name.
But no trumpets of angels rip the air
and there’s no salt from the clouds
when at last I find you there.
Grey as ashes, hidden well
behind the woody ropes of clamber
dangling sickly lamps.
Your name, that Mr., sits
as uneasy on my shoulders
as it always has, and when I brace,
uncling that vine, to be quite sure,
the plant’s persistence pulls us free.
What’s left – a fading hint of letters.
An absence none can read.

-Ankh Spice

Dreamer

Staring through the jagged hole
At the torn, diseased world
Tethering my soul
My eyes are drawn
Towards the windows like magnetic poles
Quickening my spirit
When I spot a sparkle of snow
Revealing a new world
Where life still glows
Leaning at the edge
This could be just a mirage, I know
Reaching for the dream
I let go

-Carrie Anne Golden

adumbration

echoed lives peer through
decades of paint, grime, and pain—
walls talk in layers

-Rich Follett

Underpinnings

There’s something relaxing
About a boot,
On a foot,
On a leg
Outstretched.

I’ve caught myself
Staring down
At my own
Sometimes,
After a day of labor, satisfied –

When the legs
Are weak, tired twigs
Ready to snap, but the whole body’s spared
By heavy, solid tree-stumps
On those fragile ends,

Providing strength
For next steps,
With the simple knowledge of
Strong, experienced feet
Underneath.

-st

The King

is an institution reflected in a puddle.
Crenellations are his crown.
He wears an office of windows

He sits in the puddle muses
why his fool wears a pointed hat
and all the notices are so decayed
he cannot discern their meaning.

Perhaps he is a prison where folk
cannot see out.
Perhaps he is an old hospital
that used to be a workhouse.

The fool jingles his cap.
The king does not know
the damp rots his bricks,
does not feel the flood.

-Paul Brookes

cento

For next steps

‘Grey as ashes, hidden well.
the king does not know

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

Enigma

Day Zero – A voice an echo hazy halo no human hello
This place this existence a murmur a glitch strange
Sounds no memories faded dreams chrome screams
A tunnel narrowing bright lights prickling skermunkels
Piercing my skin igniting my molecular wiring in this
Outer world existence a sudden intake of forgotten
Breath from eons ago yet vaguely familiar to let go
of these life-giving biological cellular feeding –
I can hear it, a warming accompanying droning
Announcing my awakening to Day Zero…

Memories of Us – A voice white noise entering my
My grey consciousness waking up in this warp speed
Existence no immediate sense only the monotone
Voice of an enigma haunting phenomena, reminding
Us of our former selves now only bionic shells –
Light-years have passed beyond Mars our journey
Only just slowing down this nowhere town our floating
Host transporting dried out souls controlling our
Current state – Floating ash as it reminds recurring
Memories of us in a never-ending interstellar rush…

-Don Beukes

Merrily We Go

Round you go.
See your life,
you catch a glimpse
of what’s to come?

Round you go,
lights and blur
pan piped carousel.
Having fun?

Round you go,
just starting so
get used to these
new circular days.

Round you go,
finally figured it out.
Round and round,
you just go round.

Round you go.
Bell rings,
it starts to slow.
This ride’s at an end.

© Dai Fry 19th May 2020.

Fairest of them all

Once a year you and Spangles
circumnavigated the world. At least
the slice of it that turntabled
a jerky Greensleeves orbit
at the racetrack fair, and Spangles
very secret name known only to you
and fibreglass, frozen forever mid-leap.
And once a year you’d watch yourself transform.
The mirrors on that carousel were cut
with stars, and hungry
for their bites – an elbow or a shank,
each year a bigger meal. And faces licked
to change – in one you glowed, or stretched
to spiderboy, another drooped you grim.
Your future as a jockey-gnome, or sidestep
down a well. It’s not the turn-and-turn
that makes us sick, but reflecting
on all the up-and-down. Each queasy maybe
born beneath a different cut-glass star –
you touched them all
until your fingerprints were sore.

-Ankh Spice

No Standing Room Only

Carousels haunt me
More than skeletons
These days

Maybe it’s the way
They keep showing up
Unexpectedly,

Or how no one
Is allowed to
Stand together,

Let alone,
On the carousel ride,
Anymore.

Maybe, though, it’s
The way they
Keep us moving,

Going nowhere –
Human hamsters
On our wheel.

-st

.lockdown ladders.

the bones of snow

wait until spring arrives

here

my legs would not

hold me up that day without the thought

of iron rods to help

callipers

ladders to support us

they said no standing

some of us are determined

ladders to support us

gifts of merry go

round we go again….

-sbm.

*

An entire childhood can be played out at ten o’clock, on channel four,
an entire childhood can be relived as a streaming service. Jackie Chan
informed – an ontological outlook – took years finding another copy
of New Police Story; took years to find The awful rowing toward God.
Wonder if you ever found God, backseat, vodka on the rocks, fume pipe
like a telephone, another drive through televangelist. This isn’t about
being in the world, reoccurrence, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week.

*

Recall the skeleton
of each science classroom,

the bleached, painted anatomy, it seemed,
awful to this one teacher, one time,

his baseball cap,
my scarf in winter.

-Alex Mazey

Plug

No standing.

NO STANDING?

The urchin in me is outraged:
“This thing was made to move!
Sure, pistons and cranks and cylinders
may not be pretty but come on!
This whole thing was meant to spin
and whirr and dazzle and gallop and
play the coolest music …”

Yet, here it sits;
not paused for new riders to mount
(no, never so lucky)—
just run down, abandoned,
neglected, just …
stuck.

With that word
uttered only in my head,
the grownup apprehends:
stuck.

No ponies today;
no standing, either:
newly aware,
renewed in purpose,
I trot on—
nose to the wind and
determined to run.

-Rich Follett

A Merry-Go-Round

“They leapt upon it, Mary Poppins on a black horse and [Bert] on a grey. And when the music started again and they began to move, they rode all the way to Yarmouth and back, because that was the place they both wanted most to see.”

So P.L Travers described the carousel in Mary Poppins.
When she requested the added animation of ponies freed of the merry go round to win horse races and join fox hunts be removed
Disney replied “That ship has sailed”.

And the painted ponies go up and down
Joni Mitchell answers Neil Young’s barkers
On Sugar Mountain
In The Circle Game. Art inspires art.

Adds sinew to bare bones. So this digital art
Of a human skeleton with a feather in its lungs
And landscape photo of a carousel without
the ponies sails other ships.

Art has its own life
a form of flattery
Not always enjoyed
By the original creator.

And this energy goes round
And round
And round
Occasionally breaks free
And endures

-Paul Brookes

cento

Keep us moving
round you go

And once a year you’d watch yourself transform.

Occasionally break free
and endure.

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

The last string

That little town where every kid
starts out with a festival of balloons

each step they’re followed by every colour
before they know the names of any of them

to grow up means to let go of strings
and one by one, they do

when did you realise your body
was a thin shape you were stuck inside

when did you let go of the knowing
that one day you’d be a dolphin

or a butterfly, for-certain-for-real
and your promising skin would stretch

so bright and right, to float you free
when did the second-to-last colour

become just a shadow on the sun
and did you wave it gone

like the proud new adults in that town
left holding just the one

=Ankh Spice

Cling

These peonies know
no social distancing.
They cling
petal to petal
in soft defiance,
tactile, lush. They
press closer,
sharing scent like
your skin and mine.

When this is over
I’m going to hold you,
curl myself around you,
and break every taboo.

-Yvonne Marjot

.black butterfly wing.

or
is it a moth here in the dark?

triangles bring mystery
a new mathematics

the rooms were swept yesterday
bones hidden
teeth implied

yet the shape remains embedded

scratch it scratch with bitten nails
find the origin

peel it back
peer

& find it is all
simply a petal
from the peony
you picked
yesterday

next time maybe
use the lamp to see

sbm.

 *

William Gibson was paid twenty-seven dollars for his first short story,
Fragments of A Hologram Rose. Now, alligator clips on the top lawn,
in spring, when the first of the washing, dried outside, different shades,
in length, the boredom, pastel-pink clothes wire between each building.
In length-wise lemon grass, fragrant, and turned again, cut garlic with
another preposition. A page of Bei Dao, waited for birds – how many
years? No – this is not for the peered rose – the pit you once spat out.

-Alex Mazey

Conservationists

When rainbow shades transfigure
From royal blue to Kelly green,

There’s a gradient change
Leaving intact individual

Light pixels, crucial to
Each color’s structure.

Metamorphosis doesn’t simply mean
Mutation.

It’s also preservation of
Our deeply-ingrained parts.

-st

faith in a flower

to see the world in peach and rose is
the curse of the romantic
the bane of science
the crux of re-election and
a haven for the tender-hearted.

knowing that beauty is ephemeral,
we invariably choose denial—
opting for one more moment in the glow
(each to our own degree and
in our own time and place).

Shakespeare knew:
words have the power to freeze time—
to render fleeting beauty timeless—
i need that now:
against all evidence to the contrary,
i choose
to believe.

-Rich Follett

The Biocentric Multiverse

Beneath your dreams
some great truth sleeps.
For every choice
births another universe.

And in the why of it,
the how of it,
a fresh way is forged.

Life’s spark in
universal cogs of
biocentric creation,
a machined reality
oiled by quantum grace.

Every multiverse
by one prime action
is differently made.
Maybe a murder
or a smile in passing.

And time
the measure of
all changes.

Meanwhile…
A true love yawns,
and turns away.
And you…
the never born,
never ever friend,
will never mind.

©️ Dai Fry 19th May 2020.

Meandering Metamorphosis

Into the Blue – Diving into the waters of my
melancholy is not my daily emotional spa
as my mood swings are rapidly spinning
uncontrollably threatening to drown my
remaining sanity until there will be no chance
of gasping for air but I don’t care if no one
cares – I am done with trying to please
everyone, so much for my master plan of
ignoring the why what and when as I still
try to defend yet again my own elected
doomed reality fantasy in a world not meant
for me, so I willingly float deeper into my
echoes of blue –

Red Alert – Warning flashing turbulent
gnashing of emotions grinding contortions
slowing to a halt then sinking deeper into
my elected dead water hoping for a caring
arm to pull me up from this red alert emotional
dreadful deepening meandering metamorphosis.

Wilted Love

Empty words wilted flowers – I feel such a fool spilling my love
wasting precious shared hours knowing
this tainted love is fading fast despite fake
efforts to somehow make it last but your
purple mood cannot mask your true hidden
intentions as you faintly whisper of past
liaisons which made you born your bitter
frustrations for yearned embraces mute
sensations turning into secret curses but
I cannot allow your constant accusatory
remarks to snuff out my former bright
spark, so I have to let you go before I bow
at your directed love show receiving mediocre
applause for the fiasco you yourself have
caused – Now go as I refuse to starve from
wilted love sucking my once pulsating halo.

© Don Beukes

My Bones

rise into the blue
become butterfly, dolphin, me,
an invisible worm,
when I run against the gust,
the gust takes my skull,
my imaginary wings,
my imaginary fishskin,
the wormdream
and makes it a finger to point
at the sky.

An invisible worm that flies
in my night makes my rose sick.

Cento 4:

When rainbow shades transfigure
silent drifting, these
sleeping cities dreaming
they are still awake,
a finger to point at the sky.

Bios and Links

-Yvonne Marjot

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 has published four novels and a book of short stories.
Twitter handle: @alayanabeth

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

The past of those passed
collected on felled trees,
on stones that mattered.
We have written out our lives,
thrown a few words
against the social wind;
maybe a few have clung
to the dying willows.
I doubt it. We’re transients
on this earth. We don’t know
how to live with this earth.
A silent species, a thousand
thousand years from now,
will have nothing from us
to touch with the wonder
only the fingers can translate.

-Elizabeth Moura

,power and glory.

do you feel like two people
that one is split in two
that the other one does
look a bit like you
only more so

do you fetch out your older clothes and boots
now and make longer sentences that do not quite match the others

feel happy now as the chap you are

will you go back when your hair was commanded
where the bidding predicted

the power house reflected
elected
james?

will this all be for nothing
if you make no changes

live in glass houses
and throw stones

about

james

-sbm

Cycles

Ancient Syrian
Glass beads were made
From sea-turned sand –
Displaced granules
Plus, scalding heat
Created the change.
Solid became liquid,
Became solid once more.

The babies have been bombed
There, you know,
While the Western world
Is willingly blind
(Probably from the glare
Of glass-faced skyscrapers).
But glass and water and time
Have seen it all.

-st

“augury

close your eyes … TIGHTLY.

lightning flashes dance and swirl,
neon colors pulsing:
in childhood, an escape—
in adulthood, a nightmare.

we stare into the vortex
behind our eyes
searching for meaning but
meaning eludes us
(it’s a metaphor).

if there is a message—
a lesson is to be learned or
a moral to light our path—
perhaps it is merely
the comfort of knowing that
this chaos, however frightening,
is inherently ours:
we may return to it in the blink of an eye
(or at least in one tight squeeze)
and it will be as we left it.

however senseless it may seem,
it is and always will be a vision beyond vision—
perhaps the only glimpse we get, as mortals,
of life without the burden of flesh.

-Rich Follett

*

Once led to believe, one time, the second tallest building in Xiamen,
now a pizza hut, sells unlimited juice and coffee for twenty renminbi.
American style pancakes are stacked pancakes with bacon and syrup.
Every world has reflections, every building – fire exits, that should
be observed without question. Guilty pleasures are the backlit, exit-
signs of cinema screens, the warm glow of a stone fire, out back with
a buried chicken, and fire eggs, and perfect, red grapes beside the river.

*

Versions of your doppelgängers,
lead to these smooth horizons –
vaporwave swimming pools, etc.

Once added a tomato to my rice
cooker, and mixed it in to form
tomato rice.

Exquisite, modern living.

-Alex Mazey

Versions of Us

Floating whispers fade into toxic ash
raining daily to nourish our forgotten
failures in secret mental corners
morphing into fierce creatures spitting
jealous speeches to proclaim our fake
emotional seizures for false larks to
vaguely maybe see us but we mask
our deepest darkest thoughts igniting
silent wars whilst flashing dagger smiles
of sometimes unknown causes shutting
personal borders as we daily drown in
echoes of screeching sounds and clone
flawed weak versions of us before
turning into choking dust…

Urban Citadel

Confined confused voices
rising up from unplanned urban
hell holes confined spaces breeding
nasty haters looking down on determined
individuals escaping their limitations
igniting explosive emotions spilling
over all corners infecting nourishing
willing recipients in a network of
tensions electrifies dormant
confrontations releasing hidden forces
casting long-lasting shadows over concrete
dead meadows of fallen souls unable to
deal with what life has confronted them
with in mundane lives caused by paper
cloud dreams melting into their personal
urban citadel hell with no-one left to tell.

-Don Beukes

Electron Dreamer

I am the neon burner,
golem walker, dream stalker
on night-ma-red roads.

Behind, pavements
lie murking shadows
in trenches to the side.

Silent drifting, these
sleeping cities dreaming
they still wake.

Deep ocean hunter
under my own light.
Cold fire will call,
from high lines
to dream tides,
washed in the
flotsam and jetsam
of your night.

Outside our dreams piped
to the periphery of life.
See us reborn into
sleep’s despair,
as lizard brains must
warm on moonlit rocks.

©️ Dai Fry 17th May 2020.

This Magic Theatre

Entrance Not for Everyone, For Madmen Only.
There were too many of me
to make sense.

Hawkwind’s Steppenwolf led me to Hermann Hesse
in an effort to find myself. A season in hell

I am the wolf who wishes to feast on all flesh.
I am the man who asks to be reasonable.
The wolf would eat the man raw.
The man who would be sensible.

I am the dragon in both
the man and the wolf.
I am too many.

Kes, the book not the film
ends in a cinema. As I read
I am Billy. Big Billy. Billy
on the screen, Billy sat
in the cinema watching Billy
on the screen. I am Paul
watching Billy sat in the
cinema watching Billy.

I sit with my late grandad
musky with pipesmoke
in the cinema.

I am watching 2001:
A Space Odyssey. I am
Paul watching Dave
in a spacesuit watching
Old Dave in bed.
I am Dave.

I am the dragon who watches Paul
watching Billy and Dave.
I am dragonwolf, I am wolfdragon.
I am BillyDave, I am DaveBilly.

I am adolescent.

Grandad prefers Bond films.

-Paul Brookes

Cento 4

I am the neon burner,
golem walker, dream stalker
on night-ma-red roads,
glass and water and time,

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/