Poems by Jeffrey Side

I COULDN’T SEE IT COMING

He wanted to be in Montana,
like he read
in that philosophy book.

But it was impossible
for him to get
away from his doldrums.

Time and again, his fate
was to remain
here, with a few pleasures.

I was happy in the fields,
not thinking
about the present.

Sometimes, I hear her
calling me,
after I begged her to stay.


I’M COUNTING ON YOUR LICKING

You have chosen wisely
the wrong man.
Don’t count your chickens
he hasn’t.

He has married before,
and controlled
his birth.

No need for him
to change his goals.


SUN IN MY HAIR

I've got too much
sugar in my milk, and
the cathedral is moving in
front of the clouds.

And Venus
is coming close to me
and telling me of the
mansions in heaven.

I would tell her
that when I've got the sun
in my hair
I don't need her to
come around.

Others have told me
of the squeals they have lost
to unworthy competition.

They are learning
that when it's time you
save
you can never be a
slave.

But even in the sea
you can be thirsty.


I WANTED TO BE A PLANT

I loved you so I fell.
I hurt my pride.
You tempered me
while I attempted to swing you.

You sat behind paper all day.
You weren’t paid much.
You looked at times uptight.

You had a small room—
big in places.
And your plants sucked in
the air you breathed
out.

I wanted to be a plant.
You helped every one,
yet you gave nothing to me.

If I could find a mad girl
like you in every
bar and corner,
I’d be lucky.

We both knew it
back in Kathmandu.

Poems by Charlotte Hernandez

THE BREATH OF A DEITY 

Charge the negative
frequency photons
to cast your dark light.
From motion to matter,
I absorb it like fuller’s earth.
Claiming your dirt as my own,
I am unable to eradicate the damage.
Here, there is no undoing effect.


THE DEATH OF THE AETHER 

We attempt to measure
what doesn’t exist - 
the luminiferous aether.
We name a fifth element
and hold it close.
Denying its death,
we say
there is no such thing as empty space.

Poems by Jeffrey Side

VIVIENNE DID HAVE HER OWN

Stop trials
universe neat
the disenchanted
of clothes
notebook out
at an
always when
with look
replacing but
desperation with

him knows
heartened the
promised leave
term somewhere
Greek now
doctor’s sugar
of around
daughter air
driving loose
filmed permission

Acropolis identified
always but
and beautiful
most skinning
of barnacles
called causes
or conditions
time 70%
progesterone daily
the culprits

half eccentric
complicated sitting
like get
me want
the look
head eyes
of love
just mourns
each one
Honolulu baby


YOU COULD HEAR THEM CRUNCHING

Are we really so
up and down the
next I heard her

say how have these
things happened anyway I
need not hanker after

comfort but now feel
I must carry on
for some nebulous end

so I went out
tonight and life was
headed alone made nor

stringent aspects ruling our
days I’ll never know
anyone else who’s been

part of my life
she said perhaps he
hated maps or some

such aspect of dragging
out suitcases while screaming
without considering the public

I had the morning
free and cut my
moustache it’s better like

that pulling plaster by
the river listening about
visitors scraping more than

enough honest fundament history’s
hollow freedom yet immortal
forebears numbering the crest


I TRIED FOR A DAY OUT

Apparently, she kicked
in music night, able to
regard the server as an
approximation. But ordering
chronologically was never
my thing.

And as many times as
you have, there can be
no real step forward. It
is much more than you think,
because he calls her often,
sometimes.

I don’t know why he
does, though. He’s just
desperate for a flush in
Cuba. I think something could
have happened, though. I knew
his son.

Nobody left to regard
you. So I came back
upon the hog and found
pleasure in renegade streams
in this sector. Don’t expect any
favours.

So much time is wasted.
Quantity is everything, it
seems. Sometimes I’ve got
money, so I’ve no need to tout.
You may hear of her soon, in
Baltimore.

Poems by Jake Berry

THE SIGNS 

nightshade
tomato

mandrake
lake bardo

years gone by
beneath the willows

the altar stone
light and feathers

take this cup
please remember

a flickering sign
leaks elixir

gone to seed
corn and thistle

your mission here
the embers whisper

paradise
is a motion

a simple face
lost in gazing


BORDERLANDS

He sat on the couch
and laughed like a man child

Mama said when he was a boy
Daddy tossed him up
and his head hit the ceiling fan

Now he listens to his Daddy’s
ruined jokes and laughs
like a chained dog barking

lighting in filagree
access the northern clouds

He stutters when he speaks
to echo the thunder


HYPOSTASIS

A promise

A priesthood
of the void

from which
all things flow

To be broken
in plain sight

to hear the
call

and answer
with a life

surrendered
into that

forever
opening
question

Poems by Keith Nunes

CATENATING IN PUBLIC 

Caught on the corner
As processional silence
Ghosts from one mourning phase to the next,
How many crucifixions to go?
Last man teetering
pays a Mind-Man
for answers,
sent to the corner with placards,
paying penance in IOU’s,
paying Peter the pipe-bomber to
be his avenger,
avenging
what,
no-one is quite certain


DOING IT OVER YOUR HEAD 

Landscapes pour
from tributaries of wistful road songs,
All decayed-decline perpetually behind us,
Eroded into grit atop blacktop,
Rivers of bold storeyed-lives flow
Like mercury in a heat haze,
Beckoning the rueful red rose,
Tan a-brown coppery
Short-stay and bronzed by time
Unburdening in full light,
Walking thru amber framings,
Writ in primal tongue orally set in refracting cheek,
Bobbling in speech balloons
Way over your head, deep in the ground!

Poems by Yoko Danno

TAKING A CHANCE:

a lollipop & luck in my pocket
i jump on a merry-go-round
with no sense of time or direction

                       *

my mind
is outside my heart unless
whirled in a washing machine


                       *

puffing and panting
high up to the hilltop ascending,
what will i expect to see

― the flat surface of a writhing sea?


ONE CHANCE, ONE MEETING

ping, one chance,
pong, one meeting,
back echoes from the ages of distance

ping, one chance,
pong, one meeting,
back echoes from the walls of difference

one chance,
one meeting,
fragrance of incense wafts to beings

yet unborn

                     ― from a bowl of green tea

Poems by Harrison Fisher

WILD WORLD CATHARSIS

Flickering shadows
bite and scratch and boil
in island stews to feed
the drug effect,

an army amassed
waist deep in a swamp
in a pact between witch doctor
and mad scientist
sealed with goat blood.

Their stuff is bad.
They use the spiny fish.
They make potions that
kill and keep alive.
Death is illusion
everyone wants most.

Wild world catharsis
produces sterile moons,
held by obedience
to the vainglorious core.

Marrow is formed blood.
Suet and lard
are bloods
under bloodless gray moon,
and the plants in its tide
intolerably musky.

When the feathered club
pounds the blowfish
to a poison paste,

when the gray moon
reproves the shallows
and what that might mean,
the gray turning fecund,

who can tell
the vegetable
from the mold?


POP GOES THE MOUNTWEAZEL

Speaking as someone
who has been in this bar
forever among upside-downers
and down-and-outers
taking in the hate cure,
the Celine solution,

my gaze can illumine
the infundibulum
of your soul, a panjandrum
of suggestio falsi
or suppressio veri:
Lie, or sit on your truth.


+


The wives
of David Niven
were, first, Primula
and, second, Hjördis.
Their names make him sound like
a downed man of myth, punished

by an angry god who turned
Primula into a flower bed and later
Hjördis into a fjord because Niven
once played an esquivalient, pop
bishop who foolishly called
the moon a balloon.

THE MONKEY’S RELIC

If you make processed meats
for a living, you don’t eat them.
You know what they contain.
If you write poems, you know

the routine of mis-execution,
of hearing too clearly
the interior’s elevation into canon
only to transcribe it with a paw.

If you continue to write poems,
you stop reading others’ poems
because you know they are wrong.
Beyond that, you can see

where the poets’ lives
have gone wrong, like the lives
of the saints,
ending in persecutions

and horrible deaths
so wrongful they inspire
the wrong works of followers
through the ages.

First of the mortifications
of the flesh, my wish upwells
to stick a pen in my blind spot
and write no wrong.

Poems by G. E. Schwartz

Will We Remember

…how when seeking some kind of confirmation,
            Annoyances that disrupted the newscycle like gnats
That might’ve have come in with us to escape the
           Coldening October air, whirling like electrons reminded
Us how the universe really started just above the skin
           Of the upholstered armchair, revealing its metaphor
Where the cosmos was a body and x-rays from far
           Quasars showed how continuous we were with
Streaks that scratched the atmosphere as with
           A slough of late-stage insects on Blue PLanet
                     Pronouncing enchilada enchilada to the moon?


Will We Remember

…how often so many things never fit together,
           How they were required to be patched, painted,
How frequently they peeled and the patches often
          Not of the same material, so a screw had to be added
Or perhaps Gorilla Glue, and how nicks were forever
          Unfinished, wood showing, how splinters, how a bed-
Knob was missing, and no one knew where it was,
          And how the side porch settled and the screen doors
Squeaked since who-remembered-when and then
          Never close properly, how bathroom calk, how old
Porcelain, how the pattern once clipped into octagons
          Had gaps, how often we, too, were described that way–
A structure leaning slightly, ever more dependent
                     On loosening parts on a side hill in Henrietta,
                     New York?


Will We Remember

…how at one time or another we had hoped to make
           The cosmos more homey, buckthorn removed like
Planets on their wires, beauty’s lush vocabulary hushed
           By distance’s invisible glove whose finger dragged
The night rivers through Upstate New York in such
           A local universe we hoped the sky might be encouraged
To finally make up its mind to rain or snow or shine and
          Be done with it and the moon might give up its cul de sac
                     Neighborhood and becoming the great lake it so
                                Longed to be?

Poem by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

From LUNA

NOTE: Some words were taken from a poem published in Upstairs at Duroc in 2016 by Dylan Harris and from the book In June the Labyrinth by Cynthia Hogue


the ceiling fan spins angrily
in the drafty room

com promise
con test
con geal
comm and
comma nd
comi cal coma
car cinoma

ethnic cleansing
cyber bully
soul murder
naked clowns

figure head
port wine stain

the sound of voices shattering

common sonnet
momentary religion
eyelid corruption
tree revolutions
poetic sin
mangled fertility
sadistic blueprint
managing my PTSD

i put on your ashes
as if with a knife

i have come too close
and must now retreat

back into the wet grass
my whirlwind of delusions

the wind moves slowly over me
as if burning me

a Wilhelm scream
one has to grow one's sex
June at the gumshoe of chortles
it's a sound
the yen
all those tools
pray your attention span
axes the land you pulverized
get the net
to shovel the
world but if ever
the listless sun


inadvertent self-harm

phenomenological stoma

"a world of wounds"

methadone sludge

"surrounded by fear"

lazy pirouette

unbalance scale

hunch truth

fulcrum touch

accidental genital

entwined hours

walks away

peace display

glistening chores

moon journey

eloquent spine

colorless breasts

fearful maze

in summer

still waiting


mind demons
world fuck
garden midlife
embroidery women
envisioned tail
gloomy tale
(soon ends)

random deposits
fury ample
inevitable wave
final smile
chafed index
lonely laughter
collapsed hearts

vast despair
common baggage
dense dampness
immeasurable cloud
human pose
expanding solitude

eager notebook
inorganic flowering
restless strawberry
painful rain
schoolbook whispering
uncrossable river
banned trees

straw waltz
dome piano
lazy star
vast directives
miniature eruption
weakened prophecy
mass-produced sentiments
political highland
adhesive peep show

Poems by Jay Bond

MY FATHER’S CHEST OF DRAWERS

On my father’s chest of drawers
Stood a carved wooden chest
About the size of a tissue box
Sealed with a brass clasp
It opened to the scent of cedar
A comb, cufflinks, pen, a badge or two
Living quietly within

Each morning my father combed his hair
At the chest of drawers
Looking into the mirror above

And in that place again, each evening
He stood an extra moment
To stow away the surgeon’s day

At midnight, he’d adjust the window there
To let in air

Only now have I thought that this place
Was perhaps alone
In the house
A space that was only his.
I don’t know if he thought about it at all.

He’d look across the courtyard to my room and wave, sometimes
And always, even in bitter cold, ensure my window too was raised to let in air.

TREE

Of its DNA 

the tree is ever

a reliable narrator

Caught in its branches

the moon is never

a bright lantern

Always, the owl 

Hoots its own name aloud

Aglare, holding on, unswerving

To all the tree listens, allows an expansive architecture,

rings spreading out in silent dilations. Space holds the whole story together,

with a glint of a smile curving      on the hour, every hour      and the merest passing hum.

THE LEAVING

A Villanelle

Our world is departing    without leaving word

In lands without names there is nothing left to say

We’re running    out of words    to save the world

As we speak    the world is leaving    leaving as it turns

Without taking leave our world has turned away

Leaving forests    without songs    or singing birds

The trees are fading    tell the birds    tides have turned

All the words in the world   can’t save the day

Life is waning, our undoing    air forsakes the ancient ferns

Home has fled the scene, slammed the door.    Shadows burn.

The ways to save our lives have run away                 

Grass ungreens    light fades in falls    streams depart without return

Spinning skew    we watch the leaving    at the turning of day

Creation hangs     unknowing still     we fall apart    in space unstirred

Life is leaving    all our doing    at last closing    of the day

We have failed to save the words to turn the dying of the day

Poems by Naomi Buck Palagi

THIS MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE 

one this may save your life two this may save your life three this
may we not shudder
in inactivity, may we not
grind bones
while still raw, say instead we are walking
one step to next, fielding outrage and constants,
clambering mid stream to rocky tors and offering
drops
of each fine food, distilled liquor, dandelions.
go north, or deep, or with,
go
frequently
the sound of saw blade in the distance, and building,
we are building, pretend
we are not, pretend we gather
only
one step to the next, fielding outrage and constants, humming
birds and orchids and
the whole orchestra
coming up behind us.
this may save your life.
shuttered or not.


LIKE AN APOLOGY IT JUST KEEPS RAINING

the final paintings trip locks and driving gloves cold mustering. that chitterbox birding toward institution for favorite days and gold caps, one mouthful too many. sprinklers on. when one wanders willfully waking we are dog breath, cowbell. constant companions in cruises and paper fees, take me out.

no pain. lips all swollen. chest bruised from inside. swinging through trees and it’s about me again. go find a big lump don’t swallow. paining but looking outward, driving.

vague yard signs and strong cut topiary and already, no tracking. one city is not the same. horticulture and hydroponics squeezing what’s left of the water,

until it rains. trucks slipping, grabbing. goldfish in the cracks. it is not all

beyond control.


THE TRIPPY DREAMER
                   for Jeremy Pinc on his birthday

what up dogg! I just saw a thing, a sunset vibe, medium red figure setting wild ass, wild flower on setting sun. jeremiah smiles like the funny guy, ragusa bellolampo, siculi, prezzemolo! I just saw a soft face over easy, soft sunset wave, flower sunset people in the american night, the lemonade hangout, the study, fantasia study that desert thing. wild ass peanut butter and jelly cult Tuesday, 2pm. l’uomo farfalle the wild ass season study #2. black and white. gouache. gouache b. the camper likes smiles, stinky smiles like a loner’s holiday, like smoky gospel mountain, like huevos.

earth brother’s landscape and america further in like vibe, like totally, like study #5. installation view. funny guy mismatch in shoes the genealogy of sons, die, like a flower, like Tarquinius Etruria, like landscape, desert, lake.

wave festucaria over watermelon vibe, study psychedelic, nero, roccamena. roccamena! what up, mumford! study stupid gouache, benedict easy. $688.82 view bedda matri cuore study wave, easy. soft. wild watermelon like a flower, funny guy, study! study appearance, soft landscape, season the party. study study, further in.

gospel.


*composed entirely using words from titles of Jeremy’s artworks

THE GATHERING
                   for Mary Muldoon

Love, feel this earth, watch
these wriggling worms, laugh
and stomp the ground. For there is
pain, Love, and cruelty,
bullets, we may holler
and stomp the ground.
We get no apologies,
we haven’t changed it yet.
The lake ripples
on a holy day.
Hold my hand, Love,
you haven’t left me yet.
Take my hand, we needn’t speak
of it, we shall gather
mayflowers on the shaded path.
I haven’t left you, Love, yet, and never,
take off your shoes, stomp
barefoot on the ground.
Move earth, shake
smooth waters into waves
on this holy day.
Don’t say that we are sorry,
we won’t live that way.

Take my hand, Love,
the waters laugh for us.


*Poem inspired by four poems: “Sunday Morning” and “The Outing,” by Mary Muldoon, “For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enough,” by Ntozake Shange, “Catalog of Gratitudes” by Ross Gay

Poems by Jeffrey Side

THE OTHER HALF OF HER

It was a beautiful evening
Neptune slingshots to another world
should seven in the womb
be made earthlings outside the

passage to carry down faint
signals and solar system answers
when I last visited the
contessa amid dust storm evidence

I had warned my wife
of lake basins and riverbed
landings earth creatures mixing hominids
I can make fate good

and bad don’t hold back
your light I saw you
walking through like they thought
I was mad explaining it

or something as we arrived
through the smoulder fifty percent
of that is mine when
she sat under the tree

what fancy stockings so much
studied and findings applied like
aspects of the entwined serpent
now I feel so sick


THERE COMES AN END TO EVERY GOOD DEED

On the hills
of summit visible
where the relentless
women hate all
aristocrats after

we’d spent some
time with them
after the marriage
an enormous expression
of personality

and the sense
he’d been around
after the split
she and my
son Jim

were around the
same age she
produced from under
her dress a
crest with

country roots or
something some of
the angels sided
with her qualities
and profits

shall encompass the
city and the
walls collapse a
most tragic lament
with jumping

as I walked
he really looked
bad to the
island or the
Red Sea

but the modern
man must dominate
then submit and
she remains undaunted
in France


I CAN’T MAKE YOU WRONG NO MORE

I can still recall her
nightmares and the sack
that she wore, when she
was then drinking and
we danced in Baltimore.

When I’m out with many
women, things are not
that clear. I never had it
like this before. Something
always keeps me here.

She came here for a
reason. I don’t care
what she said. I need to
see some people,
and bring it to a head

But I’ve got other
things you still need
to do. And I find
things so hard that I’ve
got to give it to you.

And out in the darkness
when there’s not
much to share, I still rouse
up new dissenters
lighter than the air.


THE NECESSITY TO ALWAYS LIVE IMMORTALLY

I’m going away I’ve
found life again I’m sick

of language everyone
has found history

and textbooks lying
around all kinds of people

on the ground while drunken
in the entry or fighting in

the war we always live
immortally you made that

plain and clear and even
though I’m thinking this side

of the sphere we never get
what we want until it’s

late in the year one day
you’re here one day you’re

there it all vanishes like music and
footprints on the shore that

wasn’t my intention when I came
in through the door your mask

shows nothing and your face
shows nothing more

Poems by Sean Carey

OCTOBER 1981

There was a nip in
The air those nights
Tingled the flesh
Clipped away leaves
Chilly winds blow away
Colours from summer
Fall wither cycles Meath
The humble pie of life
We are condemned to
Eat October November
Mercy? no environmental
Guarantee red in tooth
And claw the year then
Seemed young the moon
Was full nobody noticed it
Everyone looks down this
Was me I believed naively
This too would pass and a
Change might happen in
The real world business as
Usual continued that year


SWANS ON OIL

Swans on a slick of oil
nocturnal emission from the brewery
feathers blackened by grease
Hen wary of the cock almost
on her tail till she flies clear
over vat and chimney
Sharp clip of her wings beating
lost in a haze of barley and hops
vanishing into the night sky
The neck of the spurned bird
bends in submission blenished
pride bobs on the tide resignation

Poem by James Matthew

AUGUST NIGHT

A red eye peeps at me through white curtains
And I return its gaze, an ominous scene
of wicked clouds and dirt-dense air that reeks
of smells of exhaust and sounds of engines.

What promise from heaven does this sky bring
of the universe watching from above
other than death, decay, and warnings of
an increasing invasive cancer stream?

Emphysema, asthma, COPD –
familiar things my children will befriend,
souls sacrificed for an ignoble cause –
someone’s unending monetary trend

Of never-ending economic growth,
along with your financial goals of hope
Reek like this sky does of a profound sin
causing early deaths of today’s children.

Poems by Steven Waling

GHAZAL: SONGS WI LURNT FROM ‘BIRDS

There’s robins redbreastin’ in trees, mi lass
As a cat spooks itself and sneezes, mi lass

Ghosts of passenger pigeons in squads
Among the spuggies dancing like mad, mi lass

Up from that London the parakeets skrike,
A tribe o’ green rappers ont mike, mi lass

Scrapping the tarmac the maggie’s rasp
Chuckles at jokes I can’t grasp, mi lass

And here comes King Crow, ‘is grey yed
Croakin’ out luv songs, wakin’ ‘dead, mi lass.


FIRST COFFEE RUSH

& steam opening up the pores
hits the brain a rude slap

by the entrance to the park
the hedge is full of song

pour the coffee in the cup
bitter & with a hint of

granny’s house but her rock cakes
pour hot water on all this

nostalgia & they’ve cut the grass
only one side of the street

& the cats start early dashing
over roads before the traffic hits

& the day starts later &
later breath smells of old toothpaste

& a runner runs past phone
strapped to her arm electro pop

in ear buds the coffee makes
you sit straight up the nostrils

clearing the head of last night
& the harsh light of morning

slaps a squid on the table
you have to pull that hard

internal shell right out it’s inedible
as credit cards call it calamari

& everyone wants to eat at
the best Greek restaurant in town

where the word ‘pinny’ still hangs
on the hook at the back

of my brain I can’t see
those birds but they chunner on

of something dark brown add milk
start dreaming about the next cup


SISTERS

whooping it up in the shared bedroom
next to mine all scribble & flap

me at my homework what are they
brewing in there laughter make up laughter

maths & English I’ve enough to do
writing that story about the overwhelming

stink of chip oil on a planet just
north of Pluto anyroad Turner’s

Fighting Temeraire sails off my wall
to re-enact the Battle of the Atlantic

as Dad inserts lines about class war while
the lumpen proletariat Magpie/Blue Peter

slug it out in the living room Mum’s
owls hoot from the front room cabinet

to the tune of Mutually Assured Annoyance
everyone gets on everyone’s wick

in our end of the century end terrace
I’m bored with socialist realism

everything’s black except TV Mum’s
detective magazines drenched in blood

dogs bark at invisible cats and Dad
recites the Maxims of Soviet Weekly

Poems by Rupert M Loydell

A MONSTRUOUS DIGRESSION

In a world not immune from quotation,
art is a background for endless selfies,
a tool for imprinting future memories,
the beginning of something sublime.
No different to rock's stadium shows
or scratched and crackling vinyl
wearing away time's spiral groove.

Strategic intertextuality offers us
the chance to be connected to all
things human and otherworldly.
Audio-foreshadowing feeds us
information before we understand it,
documents experiential mapping,
embraces chaos and nonlinearity

as we turn film into an exhibition
and vice versa. If you have displaced
your working relationship with technology
then imagining spam and miraculous voices
may offer a solution. In this twisted version
of things we must let what will happen
happen, accept there is no hidden content.


WHAT IS INSIDE
Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna

'The detached eye is a dangerous instrument'
   – Bill Viola

Waxworks show us what is inside:
threads of blood and twisted muscles,
organs you can remove and replace,
with scientific instruments next door
evidencing what we now know is wrong.

Anatomical models were a way
to understand what cannot be seen;
the ineffable is found in paintings,
hidden or left to weather on a wall.
No-one ever modelled what we call soul.


SIDESTEP

Oscillations subside. The noise
we heard has stopped, gulls
screech and scrap over bread,

my afternoon slips away, the
drone of overcast minutes giving
me a headache. I want to drive

to somewhere else, see a film
or art, live music, but distance is
against me, we live too far away.

I try to be content with what
we know and have, but fail,
find only disconnect and dread,

distraction and depression;
have learnt to step around myself
when I get in the way.


CHILD OF LIGHT

It is warmer away from the water;
the flickering sun does its best
to find a path through the clouds
and persuade me is it is spring.

Maps of the area do not show
all the footpaths we walked
during lockdown, nor mark
where animals or strangers live,

paint peels and shadows hide.
My default mood is melancholy,
my favourite time is sleep. If you
walk me home I will kiss you

goodbye, gathering love and light.
The dream is gone, I do not want
to live here any more. The sky
is dark, time is stretched too thin.

Poem by Jeff Harrison

NEZAHUALCOYOTL

Nezahualcoyotl
and the mule
advanced

mountains

where they
lost savory grief

accidentally,
both their
throats were
among mules

several little speakings
amidst the brays

part time /

blades coat their throats in throat coincidence

/ yet another
fairly remarkable part of
what's under the fifth sun
of the Five Sun Mythos

and they scarcely characters!

Poem by Adam Fieled

CHELTENHAM ELEGY #702

His heart ached within a drowsy, numbed trance.
        Cameras panned to him pacing the black-top, even
blacker at 3 am, which opens out on the expanse
          of Mill Road, down the hill, past the school. Night deepened,
he was lonely enough to cry, heartsick for being
           the only one of a scabrous tribe gutsy enough to say the name
                  which even then had rent Cheltenham, riddled
with bullets like a dog's corpse, assassins fleeing
       the site of the hit, where the one kid, bound for fame,
              did for himself the trick of ditching a tepid middle.

He levitates past himself, flies with bugs into crevices,
           is the pilot of the few airplanes wafting by, Pegasus-like
for a mind intent on flight, meeting divinity, heaven's bliss
           from a cockpit. Myers' schoolyard glistens like spikes.
She knew him then, at her end- saw how the spine
        imposed truth on empty gesture, feeling on pretense,
             vital life on the living death of their shared enterprise.
This, he could never know; yet without knowing how, why,
      he strode past her emptied house that night, tense,
            sweating in summer's stew, pallid in cold surprise.

The apostate flies around a small room, piles of books,
       papers scattered, forests of drafts, faintly heard bird-song.
Verdurous plains suggest themselves; moss-softened nooks;
      just out of time, to a mind o'er spelled by word-song.
He can only fly as he reads, over & over, the lays
           already fastened to moss & flower, secured above
                 shallow stream. His friend waits, in stealth.
The early morning ride he caught then, from love
         given, wasn't her- she had gone the way
                there is no coming back- yet he slept himself back to health.

Poems by Dan Raphael

PICTURES TO SHOW

I was excited to show melba
the pictures from my trip
then slowly realized
the only place I’d gone
was to sleep, but still the energy
of a few days of meeting new places & people
when I’m not sure what I’m remembering
was experienced awake or asleep

soon after waking yesterday
I found a rat writhing in a trap
and I had to kill it.
the day before that had been
unseasonably warm, spring color
in various stages of reveal
& that carried into yesterday

you can wake up any time during the day
you can wake up more than once in the same day
you can go weeks without being where you are


NAVIGATING THE MULTI-VERSE

I’ve said that once I’ve driven somewhere I could always
get there again but when you go somewhere that’s many wheres,
when past and future the same coin but of what realm,
no heads or tails just legs and wings, fins and mouth
flow adapting to e-gress and in-, a river sailing me,
cloud divided among dozens of alveoli, horizons floating
and fading in every direction, watercolor cartography,
deserts as deep as oceans, mountain barely big enough to trip over

technology from 3 million years ago that’s still functional
still changing, sometimes temperature polkas, sometimes sound
retreating to my left arriving at my right, scattered while seqeintial
as my talents are a mix of sewer, railroad and vending machine
liquid pouring without cup or drain, sealed objects
that won’t let us pass until we pick them up
and then become too fidgety to handle, try to
race ahead of us, scattering in several directions

rubik’s dice: changing numbers of sides & values
as spun, as resisting, more symbols than numbers
in an alphabet I’ve never learned, from a race with more
or fewer fingers, where counting is prayer
where gambling is conversation, as what moves to the center
gets broken apart & recombined, as the dice can change
what’s holding them, as a ball may awake mid-flight
may fall out of or change momentum

that’s the way the earth bounces, no sky in my pie,
a compass too polite to point, the first word in direction
is dire, when I see myself somewhere else
my only choices are escape or be invisible
walking into sleeves, rising onto wheels
no door to close and just one pedal

Poems by Jeffrey Side

DARK DREAM ENVELOPES

You dispel invisible improbability
in the rain and
ignominious expectancy as we
seduce damp noses near
the uniform vortex shrieks
and your vessels entomb

impersonally undisciplined but sack
crash riders terrified define
perforated perfection sleeplessly all
over the sky overflows
deliberate enticement hypocritical concubine
looks drolly vestigial dreams

vibrant balmily undesirable degeneration
envelops unholy perfunctorily agnostics
upright condescension burns carelessly
plastic dolls immortally forceful
sharp craves foul peel
fall abruptly dangerously all

beneath the virgin coma
sighs be luminous the
lust dies blankly narcissistic
streets mark complete vowels
yet ensnare sticky witches
at the stoops dimly
body nourishes thinly boastful
chivalry capitulates dazzlingly travelled
wile the evil rider
defers dark weird and
quaking about the seaweed
reduces night scared unsafe
lost in broad radiance
an unreliable map for
whose sake the guest
makes his way and
misses his turning so
glittering on the mist

we condone mammoth rubies
before the god of
life comes again so
sensuous above the slime
we prod transparent delusions
the spirits way cool

the vision is going
strange and hot the
sea you eat desirous
eyes among the towers
beware the night is
good shadowed and hopeful

LIVINGSTON DRIVE

Oh my dearest darling
I have done you no wrong.
Like that time in the morning
I fell in love with you.
Your father was a good man.
He loved me like a son.
And now you are absent evermore.

What have you done to me
with your words that are now gone?
I loved you like a saviour
in this world you can’t forsake.
My lover of the starry eyes,
I loved you long ago.
And now you are absent evermore.

I only came upon your arms
when I called that afternoon.
And I saw a woman in the forest
who was calling out to you.
Her picture was like the one
you showed me hidden in your room.
And now you are absent evermore.


SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT FRAGMENTED

I contemplate a part of
your beauty that is
like having a new key, or
like holding a snake that
has had its venom emasculated.

The battle with that serpent is
almost over, and the
joys of the fruit will soon
be settled.

You are the designer of
my limitations. You are the
root of my fervour, and
I am caught in your days.

I spent too much time on
the reckoning and not
enough on the shoreline—or
so it was mentioned to me.

You knew the sea would
cure me, though, but not
for how long.


HARMONY FROM DAMAGES

I have heard a good deal most
difficult I would not presume to
dispute the thinking eye or why we
do not recall past lives.

Now the chief god of the Olympians
the moon and witness to genesis in
1980 a group met putting aside a
need to revive the dead.

O my God forgive these angels
seeking some sport in the sun.
Do not remember my madness
and the pain you know I must bleed.

My daughter went within a man
once the viceroy of Egypt. A man of
empty hands I warned about talking to
himself beneath his visions.

IF I HIDE THE STARS AT NIGHT

O Joy, you’re really not this mad.
You’ve tasted everything I’ve ever had.
I would wander in your night
if you’d give me back my right
to make you see that you just play games
with yourself while you wait to claim the dust.
And you speak as though
you’ve got every detail sussed.
And reading all the books you sent to me,
I could never be this free.
If I’m gone were would your mind be?

O Joy, you know that you are wrong.
I don’t have to be the one that’s gone.
If I hide the stars at night
will you give up on your fight?
And we’ll pretend that we share this roof,
these walls, this table and that chair.
I could be someone else for you
if you really must compare.
And I’d see the old cathedral fly.
And the mountains passing by.
And your nose turned up towards the sky.