Finishing is as Meaningful as the Project Itself

No matter where he goes, it always looks like Yorkshire,
pedal to the metal whenever he can. He comes everywhere
with me. I keep moving, am ghosted by news of milk bottles,
collected late, cricket odds, snow painted over moors.

The endless game of eye spy, that nobody could win, because
the answer was only visible sometimes – grandma’s false teeth.
In the garden, fingering the soil, feather light, never weary.
When I write this, he is long gone, playing mandolin for hours,

making the violin jealous in her velvet home. The needle
always points north, geese skein a morning song, and the way
on is lined with sherbet and barely sugar, Pontefract cakes,
corporation pop. The pull of a homing beacon, the case of

the long way, coming back to the beginning; around each
tarmacked day, a vapour trail, firedogs, a sentence of dusty
boot prints, books, where things are written down. Follow
the words until you arrive home. Put the wood in the hole.

-Ali Jones

Lost In Arcadia

Of Arcadian steel,
this hard moorland. A
bleak back country
kind of beauty,
where I might escape
the weight of empty voices.

Jostled and devoured
by a sense of common learning.
Snapped memories piled up,
made the life I recognised
to be my own.

Competing with skylark’s hook
and silent thrum of insects feet,
a brook that bears me on.
Roads, small as rivers meander.
I traverse the tarmac flow.

I believe I thought this place
and fashioned its being.
As if it could mend me
and patch my canvas
with a sky blue peace.

In my pack, notebook
pen and chewing pencils,
attest to my sadness.
So I sleep and dream
until breakfast time, at
night’s end.

– ©️ Dai Fry 28th April 2020.

Unreasonable Pursuits

There’s too much
Ground to cover.
I wish it weren’t true.
My brain and my body ache, and
There’s still so much to do.

Hitch a ride, or
Take a shortcut
If you can find a way.
But, as for me, the summit
Will have to wait for another day.

-st

On A Road

a wick young lad meets Devil.
Wise with old tales

he goads Devil.
“Before I do owt for thee

I want tha soul. Devil gobsmacked
replies  I have no soul

of my own. Only souls of others.
Then gi me those, answers

lad and I’ll do whatever tha hankers for .
Devil hands him a mobile.

This phone contains all my souls.
There is a woman who
would have your tongue. I ask
you visit her and take hers.

God didn’t sleep with me.
He chose that cow Mary.
Devil put you on to me,
Young un’. Tells you I need
your tongue and you need
to take mine.

I offer you hunger,
wrinkles, short life
and disease, and me
as an ugly bitch.
Except
on Saturdays when
I look like a model
and you have eternal life,
youth and health.
Manage your expectations.

Young chuff replies To me you’re beautiful
for six days. Only a monster
on Saturdays when you’re a serpent
from waist down. Accept this mobile.
It contains all Devil’s souls.

And young man returns
to Devil with her stories.
Accept the Sibyl’s tongue.
he says and Devil scowls
at this young buck’s cleverness.

Paul Brookes

Finding the way Home

I dreamt last night
that the world had fractured
into puzzle pieces,
landscapes that once stretched for miles,
broken into lives divided.
Fragments lay strewn across the sky,
smooth and rounded edges
tossed on the wind and turned
upside down,
searching for each other,
longing to find a place to fit.
My father was there,
telling me I was the only one
who could unite the scattered pieces.
“But, I am blind”,
I told him.
“You don’t need eyes to help the lost
find their way home”,
he said.
He kissed me on the cheek,
then broke into petals
that floated away on a breeze.

-Susan Richardson

Himalayan Hike

The hip generation smokes cocaine
& indulges in unsafe sex in the dark
corners of the secluded caves;
No restrictions. No rules. Get
drunk, get high and make merry.
The soil is plagued by adultery.

Some avalanches are such that even
the dead bodies cannot be traced.

-Jay Gandhi

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell

Rendering Ourselves Relevant

There’s not a single one of us
Who hasn’t seen, nor heard,
Nor tasted
The fear
Mankind ingested

At the Tree of Knowledge.
Sure, we gained the world.
But we lost
The visionary existence
Assuredness proffers–

One of unicorns, and
World peace, the flavor
Of sunbeams,
And creation made new each day,
Unbridled by impossibility.

Instead, ours has become
The collective burden
Of rendering ourselves relevant,
Rather than
Extinct.

-st

Our Spired Unicorn

is a place of worship.
A moveable feast beast.

Offer it fruits and flowers
at harvest, Easter and Christmas.

Baptise bairns, get married,
celebrate the dead in its presence.

Pray before its hooves and flanks,
comb its hair, feed it oats.

Don’t try to ride it, or steal its horn.
It is sacred and full of light.

Go where it goes, a disciple.
Some may say you believe in a myth.

Your faith keeps it alive. You
know it as a companion, a friend.

Though it has a life of its own.
Is nothing but itself.

Behind our eyes we are all
mythical beasts to others.

-Paul Brookes

In your Dreams

When you have pushed out
Into sleep, and dreams mingle
Behind your eyes, try to remember
Your name. You can always trust
The shining silver unicorn, who waits
Where waves kiss the shoreline
Back into something else.
You can always ride and never fall,
Just hold tight to the gleaming mane,
And whisper your desires in her ear.
She will take you where you need to be
Though it may not be what you hoped for.

-Ali Jones

Rhinoceros

From Mesopotamia
where I was carved,
to Indus-Ganga Plain.

Mystic go your dreams.

White body purple head
and eyes of pierced blue.

My skin was white
my brother’s black.
My horn was red
its tip as black
as star-night can
hold it to.

And if you can catch me
under a silver moon
try/dare to kill me,
then drink from my horn.

In health and potent vigour
rue the day that you
murdered your dreams
and mine.

©️ Dai Fry 27th April 2020

The Whole Sky in Your Eyes

She is a soft rain falling like petals from the sun. Stars on the water that never burn too brightly. She is the horizon you can always reach. A soft stone that warms your hands. She is a pool of light that heals your wounds. Clouds that never ache or turn to shadows. She is the whole sky in your eyes. An ocean that keeps you afloat and never tries to swallow you. She is the earth feeding the roots of your heart. The flower that blooms from your throat. She is the perfect word on the tip of your tongue. The ink that falls effortlessly from your pen. She is a gentle hand that rocks you to sleep. A dream you never want to wake from.

-Susan Richardson

Fatigue

I walk in at 3 a.m. and drive out at 7 a.m.
Every second of rest is golden.
I kiss the foreheads of my sleeping
kids and rush towards the hospital.
Luckily, my car has enough fuel.
As I wear my PPE kit and get ready
to tackle another Covid 19 patient,
I pray for a miracle — some medicine,
some vaccine, some antibody.
Prayer has become a desperation.
I refocus — check the batteries
of Temperature Gun. A white horse
with a horn on its head has swum
millions of kilometres across Pacific.
I can actually see it. Yesterday,
Gandhi visited me during lunchtime.

-Jay Gandhi

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell

 

Trusting the Musician

Sometimes I wish I were
More than a solitary note
Played intermittently
By whatever musician or animal
Happens by.

Wouldn’t it be nice
To be able to hear the
Whole melodic symphony
Of nature, ourselves included.
But thus, I tempt eternity.

This must be faith,
To know there is
More than we can know,
To trust the music we collectively make
Will continue to grow.

-st

Play it Again

There’s a busker on the corner
Of the main shopping street,
Saxophone held shining forth,
Empty case at her feet.

She plays each day, whatever weather
It’s voice is old deep south,
So animated, living the music,
With the reed held to her mouth.

I do not know her name, or where,
She goes home to every day,
But the sun’s glint on the saxophone,
And her skills always make me stay.

-Ali Jones

🎵 Frank Says 🎵

Jazz, it’s fly/so high.
Languid slow, cool blow.
Hep cats
seek:
familiar faces,
guitar phrases,
smoked out places.

Discordance melds,
rhythm flows,
drums staccato,
receptive souls,
cool cats say go-go.

Grab the heat.
Buddy beat
in hot jazz suite.
Up hard, so
tight against it.

Bruise that tune
till tender sweet.
Notes stack up, as
sharps sit flat.

Booze fuelled
schmoozers grind
dig the groove…
It’s smokin’.

Hear them lick
their blue note way
Stanley fingers, hazy
zingers… bass blurs.

Fights for heat
in solo space.
Imbibing tattered applause.

Inside you
sound builds
thumps your chest,
bass hard.
So go figure, as
piano tonk Chick
hits those keys.

You gotta move.

Trumpet picks its
Miles high
sharp notes
spit
wet spray.
These
droplets spark,
a spotlight’s path.

Jazzing tales
heads burn,
float neural highways,
horizon’s byways.
Time to split?

No this cat stays.

– ©️ Dai Fry revised 24th April 2020.

A Caged Bride

A caged white cold Bride
night bright Barnsley
writes on windows and walls.
Her peace graffitied
under an ebony moon
down narrow
Dow passage.

A saxophone practices
a hint of hashish
and
three lit blood torches in your eyes.

-Paul Brookes

Soundtrack

The movie business has shut down,
aspiring starlets and boys
with chiseled chins
are holed up in box car apartments,
faces pressed against the glass,
wondering when it will be safe
to breathe again.

The streets of Hollywood,
usually filled with dreamers,
wide eyed and desperate to be seen,
have dropped into death watch quiet.
The sidewalks are patrolled
by men in towels,
armed with sticks and plastic cups,
losing their minds
under the rolling eye of the virus
and an unexpected heatwave.

I walk the dogs,
but never leave my block,
smile at the rare person
who passes
on the other side of the street,
now a million miles away,
forget they can’t see beneath my mask.

Just across the road,
a saxophone player practices
on a rooftop deck,
her smooth and mournful notes
a soundtrack to this new life,
a connection through
the social distance.

-Susan Richardson

The lady on the Saxophone

Before getting onto the stage
she rubs her palms with vigour
and places them onto her eyes—
there is energy.

After playing her last tune,
she joins her palms, does
a Namaste and hums the
Urdu prayer in her mind.

Driving back home, she
contemplates over the
mistakes she made today.

Yellow Submarine is the
first song in her playlist.

-Jay Gandhi

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell

Progeny

I was not meant for motherhood,
not with these sharp edges
and a predilection for sadness.
I am a cog in a genetic footprint
that left a web of darkness
behind my eyes,
planted seeds of cancer in the
delicate bodies of my mother
and my brother.
I am the progeny of rage,
of battles with the bottle and carbohydrates.
There is a cruel streak
that runs through the caverns of my veins,
racing against the frenzied connections
that dictate the rhythm of my heart.
I was not meant for motherhood.
My touch is not one that nurtures,
my voice not one that soothes.

-Susan Richardson

Bridge Of Sighs

I am heart fire,
the blue flame.
Hold my mirror
in your other hand.
See reflections,
look for shadows.
There are no others here.

I please my buddha soul,
always now, forever.
I squeeze my other finger
I feel no pain.

And when I form,
it will be
to open my eyes,
world wide and bright.

I see all my lives now,
stretching back far
as a shuffled deck.

An ancient game.
There are no others.
Only me, only now.

I am a clean soul,
not yet writ.
Pink, no trace
of any original sin.

I seek a passing time
to hold against my brow.
To age my wounds
against the wounds of others.

Only too soon
will I be human again.

– ©️ Dai Fry April 25th 2020.

Childhood Amnesia

She paints emotion on the skin of the tender,
And its elder.
Tucked between pale folds,
Where life dwells

In touch and scent,
And calmness.
All newborns know this.
Why must we forget?

-st

Dyad

Nobody told me it would be ok,
All I’d heard were horror stories,
Of selves subsumed beneath
Mountains on laundry and mess.

Nobody told me it would be ok
To want to hold you all the time,
That your cries would not jangle
Nerves, that I would ask, what

Is it that you are trying to say?
Nobody told me how much I’d
Miss the small bundled body
As you stretch a decade, onwards.

-Ali Jones

Fingerprint

Zen garden raked
curved plough crests
ceiling design

Tiny lamb’s hooves gain purchase
in grooves, gust worn cracks
on a high rocky mountainside,

little fingers like stones caught
in the raked valleys of a Zen garden,

a tiny baby grasps Mam’s finger edge.

Soft skin, hard mountains drip milk
when pressed by lips.

-Paul Brookes

Platinum

All the clean waters join
Ganges — clear & pristine.
People worship the river
for its pureness. Only
other thing untainted
is a child suckling—
milk full with nutrients,
antibodies, reverence
and unconditional love.

-Jay Gandhi

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell