Poems by Mark Young

A LINE FROM PETE TOWNSEND

We invented all the complexity
ourselves. We probably have
trust issues. Remove the obser-
ver. Can we not make them

randomly float forty yards into
the air? Migrants do not flee
persecution just because we get
around. The dance heads in a

different direction. The music has
changed. It is a song everybody
recognizes. We all sing along.
It is a very pleasant adjustment.


SHE / CAMPAIGNS AS / A HORTATORY POPULIST

Equality isn’t what it used to be; even
though nothing still equals nothing
&, according to Parmenides, nothing
comes from nothing. Which probably
means that any equality there is to be
found will turn out to be worth no-
thing & not worth noting. Neverthe-
less, she will undoubtedly still be ex-
horting us to practise equality when
it really should be equity she espouses.

Poems by Les Wicks

AVAST

Their barque was launched in a swamp
with fiddlers & wine in real bottles.

Potted politicians & public barflies paraded
down that street leading to the bones of a jetty.

The crew was long dead, bled into
the scrimshaw of atrocity but still...

They tried for pirate
ended up minor demons.

Could only set sail when the winds kicked up
their minds literally blown, out to the coast.

Every captain should have their lover
to share each other’s holes, buried treasure

was always about flesh.


STILL, LIFE

Floods
random
or not.
Then a ruthless dry
with its banjo & scythe.

The infection of morning
as professionals drive in
to read strangers’ minds. Counselling.

Tim reckons let’s be real
feelings are weeds
most are judiciously plucked or wither
before their bitter fruits can ripen.

We collectively have many
reasons to be cheerful.          But.
So. We made this world in our image,
shepherds of discord.

The time of our lives
the tire of our lives —
my garden is so cluttered with dieback
it mistakes this for purpose.

Poem by Adam Fieled

THE STUDIO

The vista which then opened was one I never
could’ve anticipated in the Nineties—the PAFA
campus was set as a series of jeweled buildings
smack in the center of Center City Philadelphia,
a few blocks from City Hall. Mary was then still
in enough good standing to maintain her own
studio on campus. I had to sign in as a guest on
the ground floor every time I visited. The room
was a large rectangle, & the elongated back wall
was one big window, looking out on the western
progression of Cherry Street, towards Broad. Until
Mary & Abby, I had no fixed notions of painting;
now, I dived in with the frisson of one let loose in
a wonderland. Everything about Mary was magical

to me, & the canvases arrayed around the studio,
largely male nudes, recumbent or not, plugged into
Mary’s fascination with classical mythology, & made
a case for Mary as a Don Juana, a seducer of men.
Heady stuff, & often Mary’s tales were about men
who had posed for her. Vertiginous, but I was on
the verge, nonetheless, of a full-on love affair, maybe
marriage, to a women powerful enough to be called
a Creatrix, a female goddess in the world, & I knew
it. Sleeping with Mary meant something it never could
with others; rather than a mere palliative, if you could
get her to put out in the studio, you were plugging into
a mythological web, glistening & intricate, stitching
yourself, possibly, into history, & the come was in color—

Poems by Jeffrey Side

LYNN’S BIRTHDAY

I was a kingfisher in your hand.
I was a man who licked the land.

The switch is off but the light is on.
Sometime in the future you'll be gone.

No more men will struggle in the sea.
I’ll refuse the fish that are brought to me.

The keeper of the snakes has you hidden.
Like a man on probation you're forbidden.

Eldred walks the fields when the day is done.
He reads too much of Blake and Tennyson.

Simple measures, simple pleasures
You don’t have to count other people’s treasures.

I touched the ruler with the jagged edge.
I have not found the golden hedge.

Niobe weeps upon the floor.
She cannot find what she is looking for.

Through our many endeavours we learn what is right.
From the days of our worship to the curse of the night.


IN THE POOL OF ABUNDANCE THERE IS DROUGHT

Dreams can come true
if you know the things to do.
The only thing that’s stopping you
is that you're tied up too.

I've got someone to comfort me.
I’ve got someone to care.
I’ve got someone who has the key,
and she’s around somewhere.

I’m dreaming of the portrait
you never gave to me.
I’m dreaming of me and you
standing by the sea.

I could never be the master.
I could never be the son.
I could never be the finger
that pressed the wrong button.


TIME OF WHISPERS

Between echoes of forgotten
laughter and unseen spaces,
I feel the ticking seconds,
where memories linger
in the quiet places.

In an old photograph,
blurred by touch,
your essence remains,
as a trace of existence,
fading into the known.

Unspoken conversations
of suspended words,
silent in the air like mist,
taste of what could have been,
now the fabric has gone.


SAY NO TO TOMORROW

Sands of reminiscent footprints on
traversed paths, gather together moments
stitched in nostalgia, while reality converges
with transient tapestry recollections of creating.

Hands of experience and shadows, cast
changes, chances, choices and ghosts
of imprints, painted with days bygone
on the flattered murals.

Covert prisms reverberating with aspirations,
serenade birds with accordion melodies,
while their metallic spines juggle
star formations as the dusk captivates.

Melancholic larvae know more about this than
anyone, and have mentioned it many
times, as Medusa swirls around them as if
spatial dimensions were not the only problem.

Say no to tomorrow, until the the past is once again.

SELL YOUR TERRITORIES

Silent chamber
echoes can
be heard
when introspection
glides through
secret corridors
of whispers.

You stand
on your
untrodden territories
facing the
map of
existence uncharted
from a
compass point.

Sell your
territories to
those yearning
for cryptic
melodies of
depths and
let them
sing the
lullabies of
vagabond echoes.