Open mic videos:
PR Murry
Production, Nik the Deks
Mastering, Max Quirk max@cutsville.net
Page poems:
THE YEAR THAT WENT MISSING
It began well
enough
Glad to get
Christmas out of the way
Kick start a new
year, catch a play
Meet up with
friends, enjoy a gig
Take a spring
break by train
Then the year went
missing
Everything
replaced by a blank
Sickness stalking
the land
Lockdown entering the language
Everything closed
and life closing in
The missing year
creeping away
Each day copying
the last
Phone calls with
nothing to say
During the year
that went missing
Nothings pile up -
plans are banned
How did we mislay
this year?
Where was it seen?
Blank as snow,
each morning
Insists it must be
lived through
Time will restore
the hours and days
The year will pop
back into place
Diaries will fill,
something to do all the time
Though not for
those who didn't make it
Snatched away like
the hours and days
Of the year that
went missing
Not revealing its
destination
Was it just
pantomime?
It's behind you! Oh
no it isn't...
Patric Cunnane
Bramble
I cut you
I chop you
I saw you
I pour hot water over you
I pull you
I drag you
I dig you out
I dry you up under the sun
I curse you
I scold you
I shout at you
I burn you to ashes
Still you grow
Tough and strong
You even flower
I give up
Wild you keep growing
Gleeful and green
And you bear berries
Black and shiny
Spelt I pluck you
And put you in my mouth
Sweet juice dribbles on my tongue
Yan Li
FIRE WATCHING
a bright log
fire heat induced euphoria
a man stares
at the curling flames
pictures
once more his native shore
friends of
his youth and their childish games
foam flecked
waves from a restless ocean
red sailed
trawlers put to sea
from winter
gales they then trim sails
like the
ancients in gallilee
he can hear
the scream of the herring gull
the soft
tune when a blackbird sings
and all
around there’s a mellow sound
when a
distant church bell rings
the pungent
smell of new mown hay
he breathes
ozone like port wine
he can
almost feel his senses reel
when he
sniffs the wild woodbine
he tastes
soda bread when its still warm
feasts on mackeral
caught to day
from
gleaming shoals cooked on glowing coals
this manna
from our bay
he plaits
rushes with their silky feel
walks bare
foot on warm sand
holds
seaweed fronds neptunes fairy wands
to cast
spells in his dreamlike land
John Hurley
THE DECALOGUE [© LORAINE SAACKS]
If you’ve harkened to rumours and fairy tales –
with the usual infusion of farfetched
details –
one
fable grew roots,
when some rambling recruits,
who’d had failed to
stockpile,
found they were trapped in a desert exile!
The chap at the lead bade them put down their tools,
while he’d just scale Mount Sinai
for some trendy new rules;
Moses climbed up and down six
or seven times,
fearful his flock enjoyed
some petty crimes,
his suspected disgrace, was their sculpted gold calf,
at which his
Supremo was loath to laugh!
He stayed at the helm while the herd sought their land,
generations wandering – all still on
remand –
they’d lived forty years on
glucose molecules,
but manna alone is the
nectar of fools;
this food had a hint
of Shipham’s fish paste,
but there was ne’er
a call for defecating waste.
Aches and pains from the weight, saw him crack the concrete,
so, once more, he staggered, to his
apex retreat,
where exchange was conferred,
without a receipt,
but there was added engraving
his eyes did not meet;
on the reverse of the
covenant blue-print,
no-one bothered
to turn it over and squint.
Thereon etched, in eight point Italic text,
guaranteeing the nomads to be
confused and vexed,
hieroglyphics confirmed milk
and honey a-plenty,
but a rare shock would
arrive in two thousand and twenty.
Lorraine
Saacks
Citrus
Lemons in a bowl, illuminating
this room closed with dust.
Slicing a lemon, mist scents my hands.
Pouring sunshine into a long glass
in Italian small-town squares
we feasted on wild rabbit and fennel.
Citrus fruit strips the moisture
from my lips. See you I said.
Barry Coidan
pandemonium nitrate
angels swarming
banshees wailing
tombstones fuming in
the blackened sky
John
Sephton
John Sephton
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