October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Herb Robert
The pale-pink spikes of Herb Robert
recede in hedgebank’s galaxy
of buttercup, harebell and phlox
unsucked by butterfly or buzzing bee;
one visitor alone alights
on its unfancied petal- fair
hard to tell if wasp or fly-
its pungent nectar to imbibe.
As in the case of flowers spurned,
insects that seem grotesque,
everyone and everything
is each by nature blessed
with purpose and the gift
of love and being loved;
and for their very difference,
by only fools are scorned.
by Mike Gallagher
Car Park
Blonde: Tall
Legs: Long
Jeans: Blue
Coat: Brown
Colours: Clash
Beauti: Fully
Long legs
Long strides
This way
Bygone
Old man
Dream on.
by Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher was born on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland. He lived in Britain for forty years before retiring to Lyrecrompane, Co. Kerry. In Ireland he has been published in The Doghouse Book of Ballad Poems, Irish Haiku Society, Revival, The Stony Thursday Book and Crannog; outside Ireland, his poetry and prose has been published throughout Europe, America, Canada, Japan, India and Australia. He won the Eigse Michael Hartnett viva voce prize in 2010 and is a current nominee for the Hennessy Award. He is the editor of thefirstcut, an online literary journal.
October 2012 | poetry
Destiny
While you are dealing the cards, your face is stoney and noble,
You observe your victim like a sphynx.
I escape to the casino table,
Because I don’t have much left,
Just an old family heirloom ring
And very little hope
That I shall avoid seeing you in the croupier’s uniform,
Or the habit of a butler
Who is serving death.
My place is at the casino table.
The emptier my pockets,
The hungrier my passion.
I’ve heard the restless voice of a gambler:
“Perhaps I shall once manage
To deceive destiny… Perhaps…”
And the voice vanishes in the echo of many a gambler’s sigh.
You once again decided to scourge me,
Your shiny hand throws the white ball.
Who knows whose bones this white ball was made of,
This ball that dances so seductively
In front of the inebriated man’s eyes?
Will my bones end up
In its white interior tomorrow?
It didn’t take you long, destiny,
To throw me out into the street
With an empty wallet and a vacant gaze.
Now I stare into this empty night,
And death awaits below the old oak tree
That has accusingly raised its bare branches
Into this empty night.
Do not wear the black butler’s suit, destiny,
Let death wait.
I know you will comply, destiny,
You don’t like those who play it safe,
Because there is me in you,
And there is you in me.
Throw another one, destiny!
by Walter William Safar
Newborn Verse
I could write a new verse today
About two roses
That we laid down onto the black soil
When we parted,
Perhaps even a poem
About the warm tears that were mutely sliding
Into the cradle of your wonderful soul.
I could call you loudly,
Without shame and boundaries,
Like a bird calls another bird,
But my throat is trapped by silence
Born to powerful solitude.
Yesterday, I loved you less than I do today,
And the living memories are proof of that,
Memories that are warmly flowing
Through the dreamy summer air,
Like blood is flowing through veins.
In the silence of this summer day I could write a poem
About our last dance below the old walnut tree,
From which the beautiful memories still emanate,
But the sun is still so cold without you,
Shining like gold:
Cold and deadly blinding.
When solitude tends to my heart with sadness,
All I have left are memories
To give birth to a verse
Like a wonderful child of hope.
While the present haunts me into the past,
I haunt my spirit towards the sun’s golden cradle,
So it would become a blood brother to the newborn verse,
Because I might see you tomorrow
And read this poem to you.
by Walter William Safar
Old Oak
In the shadow of solitude now I see Your eyes,
that so faithfully carry about the light
through my thoughts so dark,
and the pen trembles in the hand,
waiting for the prodigal son’s acknowledgement.
My one and only, acknowledgements arrive in solitude’s embrace,
just like tears, and where there is a tear, there is love,
always faithful and invisible but so real
that you can touch it with thoughts
and with the fiery breath in the infinity of solitude.
I admit to using my verses as ransom for my guilt,
(and guilt is my silence),
and I listen to the rumor
that perpetually, like a bat,
whirls across the lonely poet’s street.
They say that me and You,
my one and only,
are fantasy, but a pen immersed in ink.
But You know, don’t You,
that me and You are perfectly real, full of wishes,
dreams and memories.
My one and only, I am listening to the whisper of the wind
in this warm, dreamy summer night…
It is silent, horribly silent without You,
and the wind’s whisper is dying down, farther away, oh so far,
as if called by death to its black hearse,
and I have waited for so many days, months and years to appear,
to bring Your voice to me,
gentle, soft, warm and yearning,
but it is so silent, oh so silent now,
that I can hear the screams of solitude
chase away memories
into this warm summer night,
my one and only, I am standing in the shadow of the dignified oak,
and I am looking into his empty sleepiness,
as if its playfulness left along with You,
it is silent like the wind.
Its dear, green, eternally waking young leaves,
who used to whisper in Your vicinity, untrammeled and confidential,
are completely silent now, completely dead.
Now I am trembling in the shadow of our oak,
fearfully looking at it as it drags its dignified old face along the ground,
its memories are as lively as mine.
Once, yes, once the memories,
who live so inaudibly,
shall become so weak,
so humanly weak,
that they shall find their dark home
next to our wooden crosses.
by Walter William Safar
Walter William Safar was born on August 6th 1958 in Sherman-Texas. He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden fog”, “Chastity on sale”, “In the flames of passion”, “The price of life”, “Above the clouds”, “The infernal circle”, “The scream”, “The Devil’s Architect”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
baited fishhook moon
trolls the thin matter of twilight
one eyelid of light
one slit scale on the fin of dawn
dangling like a silk chemise,
across the back of the night’s chair
little sawyer moon,
little snag-edge librating in river’s bed
snares from the current’s umbra
a kiss from those luminous lips
a falcated honesty
rising in the aureola of day
like Eos unable to sleep with him
on her mind
by Ann Dernier
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
maniacal
although she nods, pats my shoulder, and says, “Don’t worry about it, Dear, I know you’ve been busy. I know you have more important concerns on your mind,” I can tell that behind those soft brown, pseudo-sympathetic eyes lurks a maniacal, mindless, slaveringly hideous female beast, already plotting her revenge for me not having noticed her new hair-do.
pricked
in the twilight I see her across the grass and the folding chairs and faded blankets talking with some friends, gesticulating, pushing the hair back off her face, and I think how very pretty she is still, and listen intently, like a fox with its ears pricked, for the sounds of her precious voice to reach me in brief, simple, unorganized tones
serenade
I always felt I should do something unusual or extreme to win her over, to gain her attention, her look of approval, like serenade her or call out to her from beneath her window like in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, climb a ladder, snatch her away, her knight in armor shining like the moon
first kiss
we’re up in the spotlight booth as the lights go dim in the high school auditorium, she seems so happy, yes, she does seem happy, quietly waiting with her eyes closed tight allowing me to steal my first kiss from her there alone in the night
beauty
on the steps outside the old gym, early winds of autumn blowing in from across the playing fields, I have to try and tell her, I must tell her, about her unspeakable softness, her shattering beauty, her shining brown eyes, her sweet, feminine scent, but all I can proclaim is, “I love you,” and clasp her precious hands desperately in mine
glimpse
under an empty moon, I walked the three miles from my house to her house, hid in her back yard, down low in the bushes, waiting, hoping, for a mere glimpse of her sweet, pure, white form moving up in her bedroom window
incredulity
she’s incredulous as I tell her my terrible dream where she no longer loves me, her eyes staring empty, so empty, into space
by Michael Estabrook
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Academic Retreat
bland ennui
podium drones
chittering cadres
splintering styrofoam
blank figures
tedium’s bones
self-referential
legume enumerators
blunt stylus
medium’s cones
somnolent sputter
dreary enervation
by William B. Robison
Divine Confection
Once my mother made a big plate of divinity
and I said to my brother, bet you can’t eat just one.
Well, we fell out laughing, thinking about the time when
we bought a bag of chips from the sexy checkout girl
and kept making jokes coming home from the grocery
cracking up and wondering how the Lays lady lays
with a cautious nod to the copyright attorney
and all due apologies to Mister Bob Dylan,
though a man who makes his living from clever wordplay
can hardly complain whenever it crops up elsewhere.
That’s especially true because he dropped his real name
for his birth certificate reads Robert Zimmerman
and I wonder: what if his favorite poet were
Robert Frost instead of the thirsty Dylan Thomas,
unstoppering by a snowy wood when he got dry?
Would he now be Robert Robert, and wouldn’t people
have confused him early on with Robbie Robertson?
Or perhaps to avoid that, he would have a nickname:
not Boss or King or Slowhand, but something evoking
a singer of poetry—maybe Oral Roberts
But, oops, that would be even worse because there is that
pompadoured Oklahoma preacher, once the healer
of arthritic elbows and the occasional plague
of boils afflicting the odd Old Testament martyr
to whom Bildad appeared with a shopping cart laden
with lizards, locusts, and stinging scorpions and said
Take this, Job, and shove it, but the tiny wheels bogged down
in sand, leaving him lamenting to leprous laymen
I’ll bet you this never happened to Jeremiah!
Meanwhile, in the eighties, Dylan found the messiah
But it was floral moral Oral who said he saw
a hundred foot Jesus saying: raise me more geetus.
Now, I’m no dyspeptic skeptic, but I’ve never seen
Jesus at all, though I feel his presence at Christmas
Still, if his standing height in yards was the same as his
age when he hung on the cross, you could get him to hold
up your TV antenna, and I’ll bet you would get
immaculate reception. Of course I’d be cautious,
though I’m not sacrilegious, about standing too close
for fear of the lightning . . . but really I’m not worried
If God hurled thunderbolts like mythical Zeus, He might
take a shot at preachers for profit, who fudge truth and
fiddle the books like Nero selling fire insurance
But God lets us make our mistakes and have some fun, too
Ben Franklin, our frequently foundering father, said
beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us
to be happy, and I would hasten to agree, though
Franklin’s faith was not my own, for he was mere Deist
not a Eucharistic fellow with chips for his brew
and thus never tasted my Mother’s divinity
by William B. Robison
Dry
boney anorexic soul has no breath
no intake at all, its exhalation
is only the gasp of the punctured corpse
stake in the breast of the vampire yielding
a pitiful puff of fetid staleness
even the putrefaction half-hearted
too little essence for a full-fledged stink
skin like the sun-dried membrane of bat’s wings
stretched out thinly over bones so tightly
that a pinprick, unleashing fierce surface
tension, might fling fleshless flaps skittering
o’er skeleton, ripped cello-wrap beating
hasty retreat from desiccated meat
balloon stuff fraying round a vacuum void
vaporless vault of the leathery shrew
no sweat, no tears, no mucus, no moisture
none of the warm wetness of womanhood
blood congealed, condensed, evaporated
even her venom a fine dry powder
her slithering the sound of sandpaper
scraping crass across a rough surfaced stone
so little like women damp with desire
or kissed with chastity’s milder juices
lachrymal in laughter, languor, or lust
dabbed, licked, lapped up, but never wiped away
unafraid to lactate, expectorate
perspire, no bleached sinews or oil-less hair
breathing visible heat in the chill air
tiny droplets of spirit escaping
ectoplasm distilling its essence
lovers soak up this liquor like sponges
in the meantime, seedless, the arid husk
parches in her non-porous poverty
by William B. Robison
ethicist
the woman drinks milk
in a Chinese restaurant
says Derrida is
becoming an ethicist
barely touches her
dish of spicy lobster sauce
crawfish and onions
deconstructed for nothing
by William B. Robison
Shroud
At dusk
in the dirt
near the mouth
of the tomb
lie
the wrappings
of Lazarus
abandoned
in ecstasy
A slight figure
scurries
whisks them
away
scrubbing
in the current
till fingertips
are sanguine
spreads them
on a rock
to dry
in the morning
Later she
laves
her brother’s bowl
rinses
the cup Martha
left
on the table and
sweeps
up the crumbs
spilled
by her visitor
by William B. Robison
Troubadour
The troubadour has got no horse
so he rides to his gigs on a minstrel cycle
to fortnightly ovations and
all the roast meat he can carry on a dagger
The acrobats hang upside down
tumblers half fool, naked juggler vainglorious
fat clowns send up tight wirewalkers
the ragged trampoline springs a trapeze artist
In the land Budapest controls
at a mineral spa for well-hung Aryans
Dan’s ignoble Lord of Gdansk
shows his steps to ill cons on Lion Tamer Lane
Full tilt a whirling dervish
curves nervously, swerves, observes no perversions but
ecdysiasts in Gaza strip
and Persian rug rats scare Indian elephants
Through the door comes the troubadour
jester in the vesture besmirches the churches
misrule measures its meter but
the inverse poet is averse to reverses
by William B. Robison
William Robison teaches history at Southeastern Louisiana University; writes about early modern England, including The Tudors in Film and Television with Sue Parrill; is a musician and filmmaker; and has poems accepted by Amethyst Arsenic, amphibi.us, Anemone Sidecar, Apollo’s Lyre, Asinine Poetry, Carcinogenic Poetry, decomP magazinE, Forge, Mayday Magazine, On Spec, and Paddlefish.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The fragrance
of lavender soap envelops me
like the song’s lyrics.
Wherever I travel I carry
songs with me, lost for the moment
in the Appalachian hills
as I walk through a gate
at San Francisco International,
as I walk past the lobby’s guard
and then up the elevator
to a cubicle on the third floor.
All day I walk in and out
of woods carrying the songs
of owls and bluegrass.
They are as close to me as the scent
of lavender in a shower.
“Art is useless,” a co-worker says.
“Give me a bridge, something
practical…”
Defiant I stride away humming,
waving an air baton.
A 100 piece orchestra
brazenly joins in
as I walk down
to HR.
by Bob Bradshaw
Bob is a huge admirer of the Rolling Stones. Mick may not be gathering moss, but Bob is. He hopes to retire soon to a hammock. Bob’s work has appeared in Stirring, Pedestal, Mississippi Review and many other publications.
