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March 2023. I am lucky enough to be asked to be a judge for Book Creator's 4-18 year old school poetry book writing competition! See the info about the competition here.
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At Dandora landfill zombies stalk
a city of refuse stacked in the middle of slums. They sludge the avenues for plastic bottles, bags, metal slivers, electronics to sell, scraps for lunch, wincing with chest pain caused by smoke seeping out of the heaps, abdominal pain of kidneys kicked by the rainbow flavoured waters. Thousands of single mothers, young men with sterile bulb eyes, wheezy school children compete for life expectancy with marabou storks, all of them walking fossils amongst Nairobi’s Anthropocene arcades. At least the storks can fly away. Published in The Amsterdam Quarterly, March 2023. When the final negative feedback loop leaps into action and irreversible becomes a fact not a limping warning in semi-lucid minds, the world’s poets will flock to the raging forest fires, the fracturing glaciers, the empty river beds, the smoke dressed cities, and they will write odes and elegies of horror and disgust and regret poisoned by bitter marveling, and then find something beautiful to say about the flame and the filth and the misfortune, for the poets can’t help themselves and that is the only excuse permitted.
Published in February 2023 in Oddity Magazine #25 Arrival in America
With thanks to Emma Lazarus No dirt cheap steerage ticket from Liverpool, jammed in the hold of an empty cotton ship, holding onto few belongings, threadbare coat, stalked by typhus and seasickness, the sudden spewing out onto Ellis Island, cross-examinations by indifferent border guards, shaming medical inspections, new names, compassion from former immigrants, instant friends plotting to fleece. My ship is a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam. in a half-price Economy - desperate airline - trying to ignore the complaints of a wandering tempest, coughing travelers lying flat to breathe freely, unmasked protestors huddled in masses of denial. I lower my mask only to gobble luke-warm dinner. I keep my bag close, bulging with paperwork and hopes that the Embassy’s good wishes work. A Customs Officer colossus fueled by viral fear. He prescribes infectious orders and irritation. Obedient and fearful, I accept the accusations of mysterious forms not filled in, the dismissive hand when I offer my paperwork (that will create a Kafkaesque series of complications months later). Hurried handwriting suggests dishonesty. 1-1000 -the chances of contracting the British variant. I’m British but haven’t been there for over a year. He lowers his guard, risks a small smile, but still warns me he could get sick. Desperate for humanity, I tell him I understand his fear. His shoulders relax. He stamps the passport and holds it out, warning me not to get any trouble. I hurry away in my last pair of shoes, torn on the inside. A Russian-American TSA agent welcomes me with smiles and a warming story about having an English wife. From Reading. One short flight to Portland to meet my mighty woman. Seattle shrinks below to the size of a concrete hive. The line of Cascade volcanoes state in a wintry ellipse amongst rugged sentences of hills, all named after presidents, generals and diplomats replacing names from native legends as old as glaciers. My wife waits wearing a respirator by the golden Arrivals door. In Xian In Xian I watch the way an elderly woman tapers her yin brush quill into night deep ink and spill into onto bare yang paving slabs wider than her stance, spelling out incomprehensible characters poetry in her arms and hands, her hum and movement. I applaud her and she laughed, waving me away, ink flicking. I ask for a translation. She shrugs a toothy grin. A kindly local reads the characters and tells me: Idiot tourists cannot read Chinese. Seeing my surprise, the old woman laughs and Lao Tse nods. Published in Fall 2022 in Acta Victoria, #146.2 At the Circus
We blamed it on the clowns. It could have been the high- wire tension, the thundering hooves, the bulk of an elephant whipped upwards, the chaos of a crowd, so many clapping hands, whoops of emotion, all of it wild to us. We fled to the family car. My brother’s wet shorts stuck to the leathery seats. Dad offered us a choice but once safely extracted, we couldn’t return. Home where we sheltered for years, keeping away from circuses. The Beginning of Division In the last skinny years of primary school, we changed for sports in separate rooms, segregated Boys and Girls - suddenly capitalized. A desire grew to know why. Wild Michael led the way, as normal. He used his Pound Lane climbing skills to clamber into the roofing, via loose tiles, and crawl across the chasm to the girls. We’d watch his feral body disappear and leave behind twitching feet, hear furtive whispers about underwear. Sudden squeals and he’d scuttle back, dust descending, his Cheshire Cat grin. What did you see? Innocently packing his bag when Teacher strode in wondering what the fuss was with the girls. I asked and later he told me what sex was. You stick it in and leave it there for a bit. I thought that was suspiciously simple, not at all deserving of the divisions. Published in September 2022 in Prose, Poetry & Prose, #33. The Poet, God
In the beginning, God wrote infinitely before a spaceless window open to the void. Perhaps disliking the work, God threw all the poems out of the window and they coalesced and swirled and erupted into the universe, forming atoms and the Chapbook of Elements, then the Epic of the DNA, The Collected Poems of Life with award winning variety, words in all forms, and finally us, with our elevated word-souls, reconstructing all that fractured work in our little imitations of infinity and offering it back up to God as prayer or questions or proof. God does not respond, does not read the overwhelming volume of submissions. God has no interns to do that. God sits procrastinating over a new volume, trying always to write the perfect poem aware, like all poets, that no such poem exists and the closest you can come to it is being it. Always Hoping To Write a Great Poem Often the keyboard is sterile. I stare out of the window and watch the trees. Maybe something no one has ever said about trees. Forget the clouds, too obvious. The blue sky, yawn. Birds bouncing around, little Buddha’s not having to worry about creation. I hear the song of a hundred ghostly ideas ganging up behind me, giggling. I sense the almost complete emptiness inside every atom. Ideas like electronics zip around, all potential, waves of hope. I feel the bonding of a basic shape. But as I write, it wriggles and flitters out of my mind. I grab, but it is gone. Just the scent and shadow, a fear I will never know the elements to turn leaden words into gold. Published on 09/21/22 in Sparks of Calliope. Being just a poor British boy grown
where London’s roots defile Saxon towns, common woods and meadows, I know little about agriculture beyond the shelves and tin cans of childhood. So when I see the field of pumpkins on the edge of I-5 North, the bulbous fruit strung out like orange pearls in finely tuned rows, small hard heads lolled on the dry soil, I am amazed that so much can be gained from these ignorant seeds. Published in Willawa Journal Fall 2022, #15 Flowers in Interlaken
How delicious it is to wake up in a place where no one, no one in the world, guesses where you are. Rilke He takes time mounting the stairs. The years are heavy in his lungs. Peaking out of his small backpack, a bunch of three yellow roses, a gift for the woman he’s summiting. Over the last week, many middle aged and old men have rung our bell, asked for ‘Jason’, looked lost, mis- reading our confusion as confession. Then sigh with relief and head up. We joked about it being a brothel, not the home of an ‘American family’, as our holiday rental landlord told us. No American voices, just shuffling at night. Today unmistakably squeaky percussion. No joke anymore. Disgust mingled with awe that you could be so old and still desire minutes of conquest. Perhaps he goes there for the company, gives roses, talk lovingly of a dead wife. Time Traveller in Sion For the creative artist, there is no impoverishment and no worthless place. Rilke Outside the Grand Cafe in Sion he rests, a Victorian artist from a Vallais art school, just up - afternoon coffee and custard pastry crumbs in his jaundiced beard, scattering down into his pyjamas, greying slippers. Dressed in questions, he has pan-pipes strung around his neck, and a Peruvian woven bag from which he fishes a notebook and pen to write or sketch in a shaking veined hand. He debates with himself, waves his hands at invisible members of his retinue, mumbles. Suddenly summoned by Rilke’s angels, he gets up and leaves, stumbling back into the artwork he was trying to create out of his shadows. Not Forgotten Find perfect tiny blue alpine flowers forget-me-nots, Wald-Vergissmeinnicht I am reminded of being a little boy when flowers were everything beautiful and right about the world. We collected them, made chains, pressed and painted them. Plato would be smiling. But not the German knight who, wanting to pick the blue winks for his lady, falls into a river, drowned by the weight of affection, ‘Vergiss mein nicht!’ Forget me not! Remember, yes, but no loss can be recovered in flowers, however wished. Writer's Block at Murren Most experiences are unsayable; they come to fullness in a realm that words do not inhabit. Rilke. Words fail me. No, I fail words. Empty dictionary. All synonyms are cliches. Every time I pick an adjective to describe the mountains as they rise thousands of metres above the unparalleled U-shape valley of Lauterbrunnen my dumb pen is left sterile. I am not the poet, the mountains are. Monch, Eiger, Jungfrau - your names are words enough. No stanza here can capture this vista of monumental stone and glaciers, pristine alpine meadows, tiny towns perched at drunken angles. I keep following the line of the cliffs, plunging down with the waterfalls, and all I can is fall and accept the inadequacy of flesh and ink. Published in Ginosko Literary Journal, #28, June 2022. The Tree Swallows Return
I awaken from the nucleus of meditation and find the space filled with electrons, fired up in flight, defined in moments of white, that scoop and slide and slip through all levels of being down the river’s potential. That night, through a valley in the tops of the pine trees, they wink past in wrinkles under the waxing eye of the moon. The next day, the air clots with eddying particles rejoicing the return to the river. They pirouette sharper than waves, faster than currents. They are both feather and water until observed. They rise up like a ballerina's circling hands. The Zen of a Garden Sprinkler I saw my doppelganger walking down a flight of steps and suddenly cry out as ten foot high sprinklers blasted the bank, soaking one entire side of his body. In the cold April morning, sun yawning over the Cascades, I expected shouts and curses. instead, he shook his head, laughed, thanked the spray for teaching humility, how to find a rainbow in rain. Published in the spring/summer 2022 edition of The Oregon English Journal. Calculating The Cost
I want to say to the student stressing about the next math test, worrying her score with never reflect her best, the trauma adding up, she fears the rest, that stupid tests are not the real math. It's just the system of keeping account, creating a product that can have skill enough to add up spending amounts. Math is a bee's hexagon honeycomb, the minutes since you last saw your love the distance the sun's hopes to roam, the fractal divisions of the trees above, the sum of all our warming actions, the urgent need of healing subtractions. Cape Lookout We look but don't see any whales. Instead we see the Pacific as an upturned offering bowl from the heavens. Comets current white lines that pass close to the yellow start of infinity. Dark matter pools in random places, the invisible energy of tug and tear. Pelicans shoot through the net of blue, constellations of action and hunger. Islands eject from the coast like still comets, the sandy tail trailing south. Tree sparrows star the cliff top with their pointed wings. We look but don't see any whales. Cheated Outside a Safeway, Starbucks in hand wondering if there exists places devoid of the poetic. Car park tarmac. Gloomy January evening. Almost evidence only there is an irregular puddle of water into which falls tampering rain drops as if it was its own private cloud. Published in June 2022 by Shot Glass Journal |
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review, (USA) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, Orbis, The Passage Between,Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
November 2022
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