Poems by Mark Young

LE SON D’UN SONNET 

I see Sioux down on the
bayou. They are listening
to Clifton Chenier. Apples
& pears abound, plus an odd
cantaloupe whose face re-
sembles that of the Sphinx or
Kimba the lion. Pyramids
all around. No one is

dancing except the Sioux;
& that astounds the apples
& pears. The cantaloupe
tries to shimmy, upsetting
the tree fruit which fall to the
ground. Zydeco surrounds.


IT'S REALLY JUST . . . 

The weather out here suggests some
self-assembly of living matter that

excludes understanding, includes
random pieces of jewelry. It's part

of a meme that has spread rapidly from
Japan to the registered office in Ro-

mania of the newly formed Boy Scouts
Association, & whose central tenet is

that scurvy can be eliminated by the
removal of noise from the optical field.


MEANWHILE, BELOW DECKS 

The poet, in-
trigued by
a word that has
come up in

conversational
history with
another poet
about

another poet,
writes it down
in the note-
book he carries

everywhere.
Ringbolt. It
means “to
stow away.”


A LINE FROM GEORGE LUCAS 

Why didn't my car accelerate? The list
seemed endless — shopping, Christmas
parties, visiting the in-laws, plus all
those potential car flaws that only rev-

heads seem to be able to properly pro-
nounce. Still, that all happened outside of
where I mostly existed, the place where
I lived, breathed, & dreamt in strings

of code — cyber space. That’s the real
reason we humans were on top of the food
chain. The only thing above us was cyber
space itself. For me, though, that wasn’t

enough to get my gears going. I was in
a kind of stasis, yearning for that impetus
needed to accelerate a body. That’s the
kind of kinetic energy I was looking for.

Poems by Steve Spence

AN ALLEGATION OF INTIMIDATION

We seem to spend our lives
searching for patterns but
one way or another we’re all
damaged and this remains

a scorched and arid place.
Are the fish listening? Why
does the great tit have such
a range of song? The official

line here is one of death
by misadventure but these
recordings are very weird
and we have a tension

between what is possible
and what is preferable.
“These are ghostly creatures
with rounded wings,” she said.

Why are we always going off at
tangents? It’s time to close the hatches.


ATTEMPTING TO TIE

This is how to cast with
panache. “It’s a fig tree,
a beautiful specimen,”
she said. Our brains are

exceptionally expensive
organs but an absence
of evidence may prove
significant and it’s the

mutations that increase
the diversity of the gene
pool. “I was a good singer
before my voice broke,”

he said. We make our way
slowly across the ridge in
order to reach the reservoir
where people are scared and

in hiding. “It’s a common gull,
not a herring gull,” she said.


SECURING THE SCENE

Just relax and let the
rivers flow. Here we
have tunnels, catacombs,
mathematical patterns

on the walls. “It’s
adapted well to our
environment, given its
nutritional requirements,”

she said. Liquid bird
song, glorious to the ear.
It looks like the interior
of a space ship, very

high-tech., long corridors
where up is down and
down is out. “I can’t
get rid of this sense of

anxiety,” she said. We need
to break these associations.


ABLE TO RECORD

It’s a metallic sound and
it’s very beautiful yet a
single bird has a repertoire
of between one and eight songs.

“I can’t even explain myself
to myself,” she said, “but these
recordings are starting to freak
me out.” The mechanism is that

of a shutter in an old-style
camera but as the film is more
than forty years old that’s hardly
surprising. Where are we going

with this? All we want is for
Seattle to be printed as settle,
a small reclining sofa way out
west. Either that or something

of a resolution. Talking of which
these prints are sharply defined.


A LONGER TENANCY

We embark, disembark
and embark again. “Our
interiors are colour-coded,”
she said. What then of

the words ‘in the interest
of the state?’ True Grit or
Heaven’s Gate? All these
animal heads, from comic

to sinister, at the flick of
a switch or the press of a
button. For all the male
prancing and posturing it’s

the female that’s in control.
Here we have a slow-growing
energy crop while the signal
crayfish remains a menace.

“That’s our entire defence,” she said.
Here are the facts as we find them.


AN EXIT SCHEME

We need to be on guard
against the chameleons yet
green and orange is a good
colour combination and things

are starting to happen. Are
you talking about a red-nosed
comedian? “Our barn owl is a
lover of old buildings,” he said.

Diversity stems not only from
cooperation but from exploitation.
“We are running out of food and
options and our coping mechanisms

are in disarray.” An exodus has
just begun. Are we repeating the
process? At the fairground there
are mirror distortions and oblique

camera angles. At the steel plant
there are moments of eerie stillness.

Poems by David Annwn

VERONA NOVENA

The statement flies out of my mouth and someone letters it.
There’s a T shirt here of everything.
This afternoon in the Palace of Reason,
waiting in the vestibule
with the nervousness of
a man waiting in a woman’s dress
shop. I hope you realise
repelling your way of reading
is at least part
of the business I must be about.
I want to make a poem impervious
to sense. Art is eating art is feeding on
art said the poet of landscape with some
concern. Yes, at least since the High
Gothic I thought. Here in the Basilica
of S. Anastasia there are more flying
Dominicans than you’ll ever need.
Some answers have no questions.


CASINO ROYALE

Herb’s catchy brass clamour
caught that 60s starburst
down destiny roads with slinky feline purr,
following Spy versus Spy, Prince
Charles as David Niven: It’s a casino
sin, no sir, between four hundred and five
hundred thousand dollars for the right introductions
and a little adult awry, Primed Ministers
gathered a flushed deck, their heraldry spread
in rearview mirrored Winston to Botchjob
in-firm training disdaining the masses:
Bacharach or Baccarat or Bach
playing Platinum or Plutonium
and the King of Hearts, and Princess of
minefields done in, the cards in your hand
taking flight, the millionaire pimps &
knaves served with serving girls.


CAFE DANTE

Has a glacier striated the basilica’s
interior? Some great force has re-
ceded. There are too many frescoes
and statues and painted faces here
emerging through gesso and plaster,
outnumbering the sight-seers. Who
are the sight-seers and where are we being
herded: on the ninth line leave space:

for graffiti or an ad or a word from our
sponsor, or registration of how far
from sonnets we have strayed
in the crypt of St Zeno where Romeo
and Juliet were married, and someone
else is signing “SILENCIO : devotion
and prayer!” and someone
is explaining ‘Al dente isn’t andante’
and I walk into the cafe and a voice
says ‘This isn’t the cafe’ and I see
it’s far too hot to stay, and discover,
as I’m turning
all my voices frozen in a glacier.

Poems by Paul A. Green

TRUTH’S BODY COUNT

Well I’m drifting
slow and frowsy

crawling into a brood
or a small steamy doze

cue: sleepy radio spokesmen
make grave pontifications

their words whistling like cooked insects -
natter then flip/slip off stage

then everything’s coming through raw
in bell-shaped lights floating down beyond hedges

white-faced beings from another sky
are threatening to jelly us softly

until the picture straggles/dribbles
into a crashing soundscape

high blood tide/terror zero
this moment almost an uttering

get the names out
out of the way

who are the men of power
beyond the grand slam of tombs

Artaud unshaven barking
rising like a fire-eater?

Huysman at prayer
in the marbled caves of brothels?

Nietzche tightening his muffler
while the pox raged across Europe?

the growing parataxis goes on and on
the rolling catalogue

stop de-clutching fetishes of ink and wood fibre
disconnect from your sleepy heroes

let their flying tombs vanish
light into light

stop this brain fatigue loop
I’m living here and now mutating at a pen-point

let the magi live on/in
the buzz tones of the larynx

the old habits die
like street boys in cross fire

in fused clumps of these connections
the brain is reversed engineered in a Martian capsule

the structure is hyper active fragile
too many neural interconnections

a war between atoms
insect bodies burning

in locked cells
exhaustion intervenes

I wanted strong literature
interplanetary bliss for all - a transubstantiation!

but I’m pushing shoving
at knuckle sandwiches of history

devastating melodies from a world next door
the shrill silences of evasion

silence after violence
in the glassy rubble


BOUND HEAT

coils of fire
whip up a brain

hips swerve to trigger pheromones
but I was in the wrong body

all lead and feathers
in free fall

into the hands of a beast with five fingers
groping in a hutch of bones

girls might kiss in a castle
huddling in delight

but this old dreamer can’t catch them out
the ghosts on the screens can’t help it

our inner egg of fire
cracks us into a craze of dead jokes

keep on running
straight out of infotainment


FULL BLOODED MOON

‘wait for the full blooded moon
to slit up your raw mysteries

keep your limbs moist
as you lie in the shattered woods

hold your body still in the blackness
be a handful of light for me’

ancient menageries live in the spinal cells
throughout me

wait dear dearer dearest mascot
like a small china bird in a forest of plants

epistemology hagiography eschatology
all got problems now I’ve got started

Poems by C. Brannon Watts

BETTER AS A DUET

I left her there, the side of a road covered in neon spill
bare shoulders covered in oily shards of glass. a littered
homunculi, her cellophane impossible to parse. cacti split
by the passage of semis into blue arrows, the green leather
of their bodies another tale upon the road’s braille. arms
heavy with the overnight rain, the hills I rose against:
into the arid lance of air, into the sun’s hangover spill.
a hue like song rang within the scarred heap, rock and
ruin, some hidden species’ fumble with time, metered.

I left her there, adrift in tuneless chaos – the soft filigree
of her fingers like smoke or heat oscillation, the caress
of a thing unseen. the carcass of moment, hollowed and
hanging above the abandoned motel, home now to all
but the living. a lone shadow slid ‘cross the sand, time
stalling, animal time. lizards and beetles cannot look up.
a susurrant shiver in the ground as the riverbed fills, the
sudden cold splitting geodes, washing away what gold.

I left her, her sides heavy in the deep, deep dark. shared
space tumescent as if a storm were raging just beyond,
all colors draped across the lanes and valleys in a spend-
thrift hand. the doomed sands hissed in the scent of the
storm’s burgeoning, the storm that was not and without.
at night then and especially just before light emergent, a
call went out. echoing around the knees of the sleeping
ladies, whose heads held the scatter of careening stars,
shattered like wolves, composed.

I left, the barren landscape carved into a blind-baked
mockery by my speed, the cloche of an exhaust about
my ears. a moment when I saw the mount’s knees open
ahead of me and felt it as memory, the thin line of the
dark oasis I knew was real.


GOING TO JUMP AHEAD

There was an entry/exit point into the country that spun
slowly above their heads as they gathered at the fences.
it was made of an iridescent material, a metal, a shell,
indiscernible from their heads five feet above a clinging
cloud of dirt and particulate sadness, their eyes occluded
to all but the shine of the sign they could not read, the
glare of the trashed and spitting neon, the hollow thumps
of the laundry walls outside which the ladies of the town
gathered for a quick lick at the salt block. these last figures
should have been tragic in their servitude, the hard blocks
of shadow in the sere white sun, the washed out grays of
wood planking. they stood like black cylinders upon an
erratic chessboard, their pale hands drawing tracery. from
outside, the rasping of tongues against the salt was a wall
of sound they could not escape, pulling at them like a cat’s
claws, the burring static an electric blue sound.

When the bells rang, the comedy was revealed. the ladies
did not move, entranced by the giant coruscant blocks in an
animal urge toward completion. but the bell introduced new
figures into the scene, these shorter and burning brightly at
the feet in puddling flames of green and yellow, their heads
at the height of the ladies’ elbows, whose attentions had
achieved an orgasmic frenzy at the salt, which was now
stinging a jagged contralto at the pitch of their linguistics.
the shorter figures, male beyond visible doubt, circled in
tighter and tighter arcs in counterpoint to the burring. sparks
flew.

The fences dropped, the pressing masses freed at last to the
airs of the town, but none moved. they stood between paired
oscillations: the sound of salt and the dirt that swallowed them,
and stared.

Poems by Jeffrey Side

GOLDENROD

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
I watched you swimming in the forest.
And I watched you keeping your hands
upon your knees.

You breathe like a scientist. And your breath
becomes the count of dreams. You smell
as sweet as the second-hand books you
throw away.

And the caverns in the earth are not singing.
And I cannot walk around the laboratory.
And I cannot rest my fingers.
And I cannot stay in when the sun is out.

I used to think you were a gift to the
experimenters. I used to think you were a gift
to the men fighting for their home.

Or the men who cry on the heaths and moors.
Or the men who fall in the underground.
Or the men who wait for us when the clock stops.

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
The sun was escaping from your hair
and your feet were deep in the wet grass.

And your arms were filled with goldenrod.


SHE LEFT WITHOUT DELAY

I mark the time when I fly high.
I'll be landing very soon.
I cannot relocate my genes.
I cannot fix the balloon.

When suspicion is in your heart
the innocent are hurt too.
My ambitions are paved with
thoughts of a nature aimed at you.

I'll take you off that man one day.
I'll take you at your word.
I'll take you very far away
to somewhere you preferred.

I need you in this room dead soon.
I need you in the air.
I need you on the moon in June.
I need you everywhere.

I knew someone who looked like you.
She haunts me to this day.
She was a screamer too.
She left without delay.


JULIET

Wearing the Earth
like a robe,
I flew across the world
today.

I could see
the buried memories
hidden
in the trees,

and I could find
no one
to hurt
the two of us outside of
you and me.

I knew you when
you were nothing.

And then
I knew you when you were
something.

And then I met you
as you were
passed
from friend to friend.

Each one leaving you
alone
to weep in the
desert.

You had that look
in your eyes
that said tonight was
the day.

And I wish you had known me
when the sun was bright.


GREENHEYS ROAD

The vessels of love crowd in.
Their traumas hidden
among the reeds.

No love is lost or given to them
as they clutter the minds
of thieves.

Strong, sober and drunk
I come to you.
My weakness revealed
in my glee.

And book-like I pray on
your need
to comfort — sometimes.

Now there is light.
And now there is dark.
And that is the way that you
can pay
the charity you give
to men like me.