From the broadcast on 14th December...
The readers were:
Peter Howard
Extraordinary Meeting
Legend suggests that the Graeae had one eye between them;
these sisters have the full complement (not counting
those in the backs of their heads.) They're also equipped
with the latest in noses for scandal, fingers that open cans,
and tongues manufactured from tails of excitable dogs. No,
what these ladies lack is something inside the skull.
True, they have one brain they picked up somewhere,
and they pass the parcel like a piece of hot news.
When the music stops, one of them will face it, and
the others be as blank as short straws.
So, they're effectively telepathic, and
inseparable as thieves. Beware. At any time,
one of them is thinking for three and the others
waiting impatiently. Don't believe you can tell
by watching which of these chickens is making
the running. Put it this way: in another dimension
you're Perseus; Andromeda's on the agenda in red tape;
the welcome home party's not all it's cracked up to be.
And don't catch the eye of the one at the end, with the hair.
You know who she is.
© Peter Howard
The Yromem
We envy you, with your backwards
facing memories, the future always
a bright birthday surprise.
Ours work forwards, always will do
and presumably, always have.
The advantages are superficial:
no such thing as an unexpected guest,
no need to wonder if we'll run out of butter,
and although we rarely lose our way
(since we know the turning
as we approach each cross-roads)
we never know why we came or from where.
Insurance firms have an easy time,
but a whodunnit holds little fascination,
and the National Lottery was not a success.
There are professors of clairvoyance
at every university; historians
occupy tents at the fairgrounds
our children run to, bright
with the memory of the rides they'll take,
always returning downcast.
We mourn their birth, for then
their lives erode, as years slip
into the unknowable past.
We still fear death.
© Peter Howard
more poems by Peter
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Chris Emery
The Church of Christ Psychopath
In the Third Church of Christ Psychopath
no ruined mothers may pray for dust. Occasionally
unelected Elders order random executions of executives
that priests on weekdays covertly choose as saints.
And large-scale whippings often ensue on traditional
Nights of Holy Disaffection. Such nights being wholly charged
with miraculous bouts of ritual boasting from the grave.
On Tuesdays, steel crosses are recycled in each parish
for the conversions of the famished poor, whom we adore
as divine atrocious food, all gristle and lice. And obese
flagellants repose on the designated benches, staring at
a prostrate sea, their incandescent robes signifying still
neglected island martyrs, stalwarts of the recent purges,
for whom most pray for dunkings in the Hermeneutic
Lake of Blood. And idealistic Wednesday pogroms
in season still flourish, where, through the provinces,
bishops in shabby wigs ride pigs through the streets,
stopping only to piss on the lewd exiles of the Faith.
Everyone takes time to share god's lesson of venomous
absence with the sad pathetic Council of the Damned.
And all the while, itinerant priests continue calling on tall
houses in the city, lecturing insomniac Magistrates
and Councillors on the indecency of science
and the amnesty of lies.
© Chris Emery
Feathers
It was a one foot corpse the pathologist showed me -
troubled in to two and somehow squint and arm in arm,
tan and shrivelled, (we thought of skin relinquished
from some shorn cast), and each tucking the other in.
Here the sight widens to eyes and ears and hair
and toes; it seems and endless list that we compile
at our leisure. Meanwhile, the metal slab they lie on
dully shines. We seem similarly regarded
from this small hug which, as we see, remains
simplified in one distended tight bone girdle.
We're blank before it, summoning particular reliefs.
So there they lie, leather, charmed and durable -
satisfiably cosy, we imagine, in that sister's bond.
We smile and stoop, reporting facts as if to prove
our courtesy is right at this intrusion.
Below us, stowed, both slipped and pinched and tiny faces.
Now miles and miles and miles apart, we think of care
and toe the line and stare and flex our crisp
indefinite spines, reflecting on flesh's pure collusion
and the augmenting gift of touch. Like feathers, say,
feathers falling on our bare skin. Or more realistically
we feel base and love the quality of baseness.
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Adrian Green
Ripe Cherries
"Ripe cherries" you said
"Something to write about."
So I did,
started thinking anyway,
but, like Herrick,
lingered on some Julias lips
too long.
Theres no relationship, you see,
between the cherries I remember -
bitter, uneatable before theyre cooked -
and those you dream for me.
Perhaps it is a fantasy
that Herrick also dreamt -
late summer fruit, a sensing tongue,
the pliant flesh around
a sudden stone,
but then,
"Ripe cherries" you said
to give me a poem,
and my thought was you.
© Adrian Green
("Ripe Cherries" has been previously published in "Openings" (Open
University Poets) and "Poetry in Practice" (The Garlic Press)
Roses
Pruning a year's growth
to encourage new blooms,
I break thorns to frustrate
your ability to wound,
like old memories.
A form of castration
this stripping of armoury,
knowing the rose will bud fresh
and clear as the sound
of mutilated singers.
I have taken shares with God,
grafting on to a flowerless root,
and am punished with thorns
for the resulting beauty.
© Adrian Green
("Roses" has been previously published in the "Southend Poetry" series)
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John Heath-Stubbs
The Parson's Cat is a Territorial Cat
"I'm sick of the country" said red Reynard
"Poison, pollution, traps, guns-
That's all it is. And most the infamous hunt-
Riffraff in spurious pink,
And at their heels
The sycophantic baying of the pack.
They dig out one, they stop up earths,
Throw one to the tearing of the fangs.
Themselves are blood-baptised, they call it sport.
"It was different perhaps in England's dreamtime,
When they hunted the sun at midsummer
Out of the harvest field, and horn-calls music
Would blow away the morning dew. But now - Ough!
"I will go to the town," he said, "I will change my name.
I shall be Urban Fox. There in the dustbins,
I'm told, there are rich pickings.
For there is nothing the affluent and upwardly-mobile
Enjoy more than throwing away good food -
While they let drop a mildly crocodilian tear
For the Ethiopian starving."
So he trotted along the tarmac at dawn,
Sneaked by hedgerows, where there were still hedgerows,
Along dry ditches, until at length he came
To what hed been a village, now engulfed
By spreading suburban sprawl.
He entered, so it chanced, the vicarage garden,
But there he encountered a horror,
A monster - the parson's cat
With hair on end fluffed up
To double his size, tail erect like a bottle-brush,
Claws unretracted, spitting hatred and anger
And, as it seemed, poison.
"Out!" said the cat. "You dog. This is my patch.
Out, you filthy sandy-haired stinking tyke!"
"I beg your pardon," said the fox, "I am no dog.
See, I have eyes that wax and wane
Like yours in the light and darkness.
We two ought to be allies.
As for my stink, you can ask the hounds about that.
It is totally alien from them. They itch
To tear me limb from limb."
"Dog you are," said the cat "and as dog you'll go!
And that applies to Brock, your crony, too!"
"Why, clearly he's no canine." "Half weasel and half bear
That he may be! But still I'll see him off,
As I would the great, frozen, starry Bear himself
Prowling around Polaris
Through the long darkness of the winter nights.
So off with you dog-fox or else you'll feel
My talons in your waxing, waning eyes,
The points of my teeth in the base of your brittle spine."
The fox, Sir Urban Fox, strategically
Withdrew. He knew when he wasn't welcome.
© John Heath-Stubbs
from The Torriano Sequences
(read by Susan Johns)
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Rosemary Norman
Life on Mars
The cold is bitter here. Still,
on the warmest days
I work without a jacket.
I stoop and dip my fingers,
powder them Mars red
with the soft rusts the wind brings in,
and sketch my rosy ghosts
ogling each other, ordering lost cocktails
at the windswept bar
where nothing, only a fractured
and abstracted pink and gold,
is what it was, endures.
The wind comes in again. They lean
easily on its long, solo blow.
Loose-livers, all.
And the wind run loose among them
circulates this gorgeous dust.
Volcano, crater, canyon.
Earth words rehearse themselves.
The voice, my own,
is paced and sure, as if recorded once
and then forgotten. Voice
or voice-over. Nothing, it says. No-one.
Yet gravity is low. I am borne up.
Who could discover lifelessness
in such workable ochres?
© Rosemary Norman
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Dubravka Velasevic
Volcano Cycle
Sleeping Volcano
Leave that volcano to sleep
For I can smell the fire
Trying to untangle the handcuffs
To escape under the skin
Lets keep that volcano asleep
For the beast is never really innocent
And neither of us are
Beyond the great danger -
If you release the steam
Leave that dragon undisturbed -
For they can start to roar :
The earthquakes
The hurricanes
Amazons
Let them safely sleep
Away in the distant past
In the long forgotten myths
For somehow I know -
Before is always better
Than what comes after the sorrow
Leave that volcano to dream
For I can see the ashes
Falling down from the mountains
Turning spring into greyness
The verdure of the valleys
Into darkness
You had better leave that volcano to sleep
© Dubravka Velasevic
The Smile of the Miracle
How much wasted time
How many wasted years
Even youth has almost vanished
Waiting for that miracles smile
How many poems never written
How many plays never performed
How many letters Ive never sent
How many days never enjoyed
So much unrecognised treasure
So many extinguished rubies
So many hours when I was late
So much darkened gold
How many sunken lands of Atlantis
How many unresolved incarnations
Hurry up !
Quickly !
Now
This life - wont last for ever
© Dubravka Velasevic
Dreamland
Oh,
How much I missed you
How much I missed your hand !
I missed you
Even when I was with you
Didnt you know that ?
Your eyes - were so dreamlike
Why cant you say Go ahead !
The life has stopped for far too long
The sky is blooming
Get yourself ready
Dont wait !
Yes, they are still screaming -
Those sweet little bears
The damage they want to mend
But why not say No to the pasts ghosts
And join the feast of the land
Why not - forgive
And let go
Its a waste being alive
But scared
And Anger ...
What to do with the anger ?
You say :Its nice.
But it pains
If the anger was worth so long searching for -
We all would be by now long dead
Sleep well, my friend !
Let farewell be silent
The Greek isles cannot stand -
The sadness of the constant partings
Ill see you in my dreamland
Youll find me on your hand
© Dubravka Velasevic
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****
John Rety
The poet offers his wares
I have four liners
I have four liners
I have four liners
I have four liners
Also have three liners
Also have three liners
Also have three liners
Plenty of two liners
Plenty of two liners
Working on one liner now
© John Rety
Ancient song
The black earth drinks
And so does the tree
The sea drinks the stream
And the sun drinks the sea
The moon drinks the sun.
So why oppose me, friends,
Who wishes to drink
Just like the sea
© John Rety
What's in a name
What does it feel like, Schoenberg
To be Schoenberg, Schoenberg,
Asked a friend of Schoenberg's
Difficult, sighed Schoenberg,
But somebody had to be a Schoenberg
And I thought might as well be me that Schoenberg.
© John Rety
Understanding
The most we can hope for
Is that we might be understood by others
with different understandings to ourselves.
© John Rety
Art and the Man
The man in the garden was numbering the leaves
The tree was just a tree
The man was just a man
The numbering took ages
That was in the Summer
Every leaf was numbered
In the Autumn the man
Gathered the fallen leaves.
The man was in the garden pinning back the leaves
The tree was no longer just a tree
The man was no longer just a man
He was an Artist and his work of art was the tree.
© John Rety
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