POETRY KITe ANTHOLOGY

Mandy Pannett

2009-05-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

LETTER FROM PUSHKAR

Wish you could see me now at Pushkar Fair –
like a bug in the straw in the midst of a crowd –
Can you imagine the smell? Hot spices,
sweat, wet cattle dung ...Have you stood close
to a camel? They’re massive with gentle, soft
eyes. Last night I sat on the shores of the lake

where people were bathing in ritual dips. This lake
is well known – as famous itself as the Pushkar Fair –
for its sunsets of saffron and red. Reflections are soft
in the lake. I was glad to escape from the crowds,
those tourists, shoving to get themselves close
to the stalls with their trinkets and spices

like scarlet-bright chillies – the fiercest of spices –
and baskets of fresh coriander green as the lake.
It is sacred, that lake, sacred to Brahma, close
to a sense of creation away from the fair
with its picturesque beggars and crowds
with their greedy, small eyes. Voices are soft

by these waters, there’s a harmony here, soft
as a sitar, although like harsh spices
that clash on the palate, other gods crowding
in with their force may save or destroy a green lake.
One may give battle for all that is fair
while another brings worlds to a close.

Do I sound like an expert on India now, close
to its wisdom – a tourist become a soft
guru who chants Now open your eyes to the fair
and the good ...? Truth is more varied than spices
in Pushkar, that beautiful, sanctified lake
is degraded, poisoned by crowds

and by centuries of garbage – I don’t mean that crowds
throw their rubbish bits in – those who are close
to the spirit of Brahma cherish the ethos, the lake
and its temples, but we are too careless, it’s us who are soft.
Enough. I am here on a tour, to barter for spices,
take photos of camels, experience Pushkar Fair.

Here are snapshots of our crowd, blurred and soft
at close of day, spices packed away in boxes,
Shiva’s moon upon the lake, upon the dwindling fair.

.

Lesley Burt

2009-03-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

Nine-Ten

I experience no premonition as we fly into JFK
from Boston for a first visit to New York.
We dump cases on the counterpane and check
the en suite bathroom, where we are greeted by
a huge cockroach. The maid soothes us and disposes
of it. We already hate the hotel room, so hurry out.

The open top of a Gray Line bus will orientate
us before trips to Liberty Island, galleries and Macy’s.
After commentaries at Harlem and Central Park,
passengers enjoy a view of the ‘largest cathedral in
the world’, then - to escape lightning and rain –
hasten en masse to the lower deck. Roof seams leak.

Water cascades downstairs. One of the crowd yells
‘Titanic!’ The crushed throng laughs. We transfer
to the downtown tour and look out for streets Ella
sings about in ‘Manhattan’. We stop. Our guide tells
us a few World Trade Center statistics. We crane
our necks to try and see the Twin Towers. ‘They

tried to blow it up in 1993,’ he continues, ‘but hey,
it was just too well designed and built.’ Then -
with no thoughts of his tempting Providence, or
omens borne by thunderstorms - we dine, while
flies circle the dingy trattoria, anticipating a full
and exciting day touring the Big Apple tomorrow.

.

Geoff Stevens

2009-03-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

ONE GREAT STEP INTO THE LIBRARY

The Public Library today
is an attempt to prevent you travelling through inner space
and landing on the truth
is a Van Halen Belt
an asteroid obstacle course
intent on the discouragement of lone exploration.
It hurls propaganda at you
from notice boards and on leaflets
deposited by the little grey men of Planet Government
and pinned up by the android library staff
that monitor and record your intake
from the shelves of approved information
from the censored internet provision.
It is an insurmountable obstacle
and thus all claims of landing on the truth
are false
no manned journey has been made
no touchdown even on the surface is possible
and all the evidence you see to the contrary
was made in the studio
with actors in the leading roles.
The library is dangerous to your sanity.
Stay away!

Geoff Stevens is the recipient of the 2009 Ted Slade Award

Les Murray

2008-05-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

Poems the Size of Photographs, 2002, (published by Carcanet, www.carcanet.co.uk)

Les will be reading at
University of Surrey
Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH UK

Friday 30th May 2008
Free by ticket only
starts 6 p.m.

Jim Bennett

2008-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

changed in subtle ways

the land changed in subtle ways
as unfolding green stalks
bristle the hillside and reflect
in the bookshop window
the book titles craze
in rainwater lenses

on the road outside
the Orange Tree Café
the cars and busses
bustle through the junction
taking turns at traffic lights
sending waves of
stranded rainwater
across the pavement

the land changed in subtle ways
as the ghosts of hills
undulate across
Tesco’s car park
and grass squeezes through
a pavement crack
remembering a meadow
.
.

James Bell

2008-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

at random

at random he sits on a section of wall
beside the large boat usually seen from a distance

he ignores it and sits to write
feels the heat of sun on his back

something sensual after days of storm -
ducks and gulls make diva noises
for good weather -
tell him not only humanity
like to have pleasure

then he turns and sees how moss has woven
into the strands of a boat mooring

that here at low tide still lays stretched on the bank
in a rictus of times when strained
on the metal pulley held in concrete beside him

only sun has allowed him to notice
suggested to him it was fine to sit
suggested too this sheltered spot at the river bend

from the same smart wind that has howled the estuary
for enough days to make him question randomness
and the strength of the mooring for this boat
at this bend in the river
for some kind of forever

.

Jim Bennett

2008-02-14T14:56:00.000-08:00

5
(from a series of 56)

the Mothers Union
picknicks
and nitpicks
black hills
golden fields
and questions
“Is he your son?”
“is this the one you adopted?.”
but she
clung to her membership
like a badge
and often whispered
“you are so special
because we picked you.”

so they went
mother and son on
sandcastle afternoons
train trips to New Brighton
in summers that went
on and on and on

Joolz Denby

2007-11-28T03:47:00.000-08:00

Gold

The Bride stands at the latticed
window gazing out into the ineffable
dusk of her last maiden day,
the stepping silhouettes of the distant hills
shade on shade of tender dissolving blue,
the smoky rose and violet of sunset ashing
into the coming night.

A thread of incense smoke unwind
sits sweet sandalwood embroidery into the
warm air as she dreams,
her smooth young face hieratic and distant,
her eyes dark as holy pools,
her shining hair a tasselled braid
dropping to her knees uncut,
scented with jasmine and amber.

Tomorrow her almond-pale body
will be burnished, hennaed and
perfumed, then wrapped in her wedding sari,
the archaic weight of fabric more than simple cloth,
being freighted with symbolism
and heavy with women's magic.
The sari, a serpentine length
of pigeon's blood scarlet, brocaded, precious,
the core of its incantatory pattern a filament
of pure yellow gold, the metal drawn fine as gossamer,
woven into the very garment she will wear,
her future secured by its unchanging value
and as just as her mother did,
when the fine silk dulls and frays,
she will feed it to the fire which will
consume the silk leaving in the dross
the unchanging and eternal purity
of the sun's sister, Gold.

There in the hot cinders it will glitter,
the indissoluble reminder of herself,
the knowledge that whatever she appears,
however the World sees her
what she is in essence remains
unchanging, faithful, pure.

This is her talisman,
like the old spiral wedding pendant
even her grandmother has forgotten the age of,
that shows the turning path of her life
trace from birth to death and back again
and will see her daughter's journey
and will lie on the breast of her grandchild
when this same sun warms
her knotted hands and the veils
between life and death are worn transparent.

Her daughter, yet unborn,
will one day show her her dowry cloths,
just as she showed her own grandmother
the priceless saris, months in the making,
stamped and foiled in the same gold
that winds its threads through her wedding garment,
and watched the old woman sigh
and touch the bright designs gently, gently,
half-immersed in the past,
her heart a storehouse of mystery and wisdom,
understanding that like the fire that
burns the worn and discoloured silk
from the golden core,
pain tempers the spirit, and a woman,
like a spear-head or a good sword,
carries her strength in the beauty of not harming
where she might, in protecting that which needs her
and in turning the fierce edge of pride to creation,
not destruction.

The mother, having given birth,
also tends the dying;
Gold, blessing the Bride,
honours the Dead.

All that seems simple -
a shining yellow metal,
a young woman dreaming at dusk -
is complexity past imagination:
all that seems soft, weak, helpless -
a trembling Bride engulfed in her vestments,
a little ornament catching the light -
is enduring and unbowed beyond Time and Fortune.

Here is Gold. Here is The Bride.

Here is the mystic union.

Here is Gold.

www.joolz-denby.co.uk
www.myspace.com/joolz_denby
www.myspace.com/wildthingjoolzdenby
www.facebook.com/JoolzDenby

A. F. Harrold

2007-11-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

Keep On Keeping On

Pass through the portal, the passage, the doorway,
the alley, the wormhole, the window, the chink,
the keyhole, the skylight, the gateway, the tunnel,
the pinhole that's forced in the butterfly's back,
the crack in the rock-face, the cave-mouth, the well-mouth,
the trapdoor, the hatchway, the fanlight, the frame,
the eye of the needle, eye of the hurricane,
the hole in the ear where an earring's just been.

But remember Orpheus, remember Eurydice,
remember Lot and remember Lot's wife,
keep an eye on the light at the end of the dark
and just keep keeping on and it might be alright.

Slip through the eyelet, the loop of the shoelace,
the hole in the Polo, the witch-stone, the ring,
the paper-chain circlet, the ring of red roses,
the thumb and fore-finger of a diver's 'okay',
the hole in the pocket, the wallet, the handbag,
the hole in the bucket, the doughnut's one eye,
dart down the mouse-hole, the plughole, the pipeline,
through porthole or portico, triumphal archway.

But remember Orpheus, remember Eurydice,
remember Lot and remember Lot's wife,
keep an eye on the light at the end of the dark
and just keep keeping on and it might be alright.
Loop-the-loop smoke ring blown from a mouth-hole
and dive through the hoop (avoiding the flames),
go on through the silence that lives between words,
go on through the dark that's the gap between days,
live through the blink that cuts this from that moment,
and live through the adverts that break up the shows.
Pass through all intervals, set changes, quick changes,
house moves, bereavements and chapters of books.

But remember Orpheus, remember Eurydice,
remember Lot and remember Lot's wife,
keep an eye on the light at the end of all tunnels
and just keep keeping on and it might be alright.

www.afharrold.co.uk and www.myspace.com/afharrold

Adam Taylor

2007-10-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

DOT DOT DOT

... by a pointillist
so it consists
entirely of dots
and a minimalist
so only three ...

... not so much nice,
as delightfully concise,
a triptych,
basic maybe,
yet epic, rhetorical ...

... fearlessly bare,
atomic,
molecular,
microcosmic ...

... eyes and a nose,
ears and a mouth?
the blind mice?
the musketeers? ...

... a lot to the eye
but joining them
isn't advised ...

... something I
could've done
but didn't ...

... a synopsis
of four?...

...(an ellipsis)
or more?...

dot dot dot

.

Jim Bennett

2007-08-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

a trip up the tower

at the top of The Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool
3rd May 2007

when you are on the street
everything in Liverpool
is busy with people
cars and busses
but today my children
brought me up here
above the noise and rush
climbing stairs
to the highest point
in the city

from here
when I look down
I see trees

trees in gardens
and streets
trees growing in areas
and on old chimneys
trees small and large
their green canopies
marking their presence
almost unnoticed by
passers by

you see on the ground
Liverpool is tarmac
and brick
but from here
it is a forest
breathing with the wind

.

Clare Kirwan

2007-05-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

Her Things

twenty woollen cardigans
bone china tea set porcupine
quill box containing pencils
Readers Digest book of birds
out of date prescription drugs
BT phone bill low user tariff
tubes of antisan and germolene
gift sets lavender geranium
china toothbrush holder a pair
of sheepskin gloves good winter
coat vinegar Bovril butter beans
jars of dust marked cinnamon
rosemary thyme four carrier bags
full of carrier bags chamois leathers
margarine tub containing buttons
butterfly in Caithness glass
china rose a souvenir of Madeira
Mantovani's greatest hits LP
napkins doilies net curtains
two candy-striped flanellette sheets
and single duvet (slightly soiled)
ten pairs support briefs flesh-coloured
tights small bag of frozen sprouts
box of blank Christmas cards
Pifco hairstyler seventies cigarette box
carpet sweeper slide projector
golfing trophies walking stick

.

Stuart Nunn

2007-04-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

African landscape with figures

You see them first down the long perspective
of motorways, men dwarfed by distance.
Flashing past, no details impinge, but a sense
of want that’s driven them out here where
no goal or departure point is evident.

Soon you expect them, walking where you drive,
walking – where to? Where from?
Sometimes two or four, not together,
spaced as though to make some point
in a language you don’t understand.

Later you find a destination or point
of origin in the hillsides of plastic sheeting,
plywood or corrugated tin leaving you
to imagine all the life that’s buried there,
marked off with high walls and safety barriers

stopping this other world colliding
with your safe white rush from beauty spot
to national park. Later still, you see them
everywhere, these walking, waiting Africans,
driven to the edges of our perceptions.

They walk through a landscape theirs
by law and ancient practice, but which
they didn’t make. Not strangers, not foreign,
but curious, unreadable, and, like the landscape,
strangely eloquent.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

2007-04-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

Seascape With Sun and Eagle

Freer
than most birds
an eagle flies up
over San Francisco
freer than most places
soars high up
floats and glides high up
in the still
open spaces

flown from the mountains
floated down
far over ocean
where the sunset has begun
a mirror of itself

He sails high over
turning and turning
where seaplanes might turn
where warplanes might burn

He wheels about burning
in the red sun
climbs and glides
and doubles back upon himself
now over ocean
now over land
high over pinwheels suck in sand
where a rollercoaster used to stand

soaring eagle setting sun
All that is left of our wilderness

.

Joy Leftow

2007-03-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

MY MOTHER

My mother is an artist
She designs embroidery
- a dying art - and creates
any design she desires
her hands instruments
of a higher force

She explains to me
how this one is a fleur-de-lis
and how in the region
where we come from
it is made differently
from someplace else

With only one eye
the other is glass
she sees more than I do
She is dying
my heart is unsteady
I am powerless
a witness to her fate

My mother’s hands create
embroidery with many
names and meanings
She patiently explains
the subtle meanings
behind each motifI

listened in awe
while she explained
all of this to me
I had nothing to say

Now there is even
less to say as
Each day brings her
closer to her end
I drown in helplessness

She tells us she is sick, not stupid
she knows her death is near
If only I could relieve her suffering
I would do so until the end

She alternates between begging for death
then apologizes for doing this
She is my mother, she worries
about me, my mental health
how I will handle her death instead

I think about her hands flying quickly
the needle moving as tho she has 3 eyes
The pattern suddenly emerging
Then the design is near complete
like the course of my mother’s life

Louie Crew

2007-01-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

Queercide

There are at least four good ways
to kill a queer.

*Classic* is to tie her to a stake
surrounded by male faggots
doused in kerosene
and throw a match.

*Traditional* is to brand them
with pink triangles
and let them season
a few baked Jews.

*Down-Home* is to take
a crowbar or an ax
or just any steel projectile,
preferably one with prongs,
cut off a private part,
and let the queer bleed slowly
in some dark place.

*Contemporary* is to place them
anywhere in the U.S.A.
and spank their first breath.

Waiata Dawn Davies

2006-12-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Singing at Sunrise

When he had driven the midwife home
my father hoed potatoes
in his back garden
'Kia Ora' he called to our neighbour
'We had another daughter last night."
our neighbour slapped his knee, and laughed,
"I thought I heard a little waiata in the night"

Later Dad took me, red faced and squawling,
to the fence.
"Well, hello, Waiata Dawn,'
our neighbour said.
And so I was named
by an old man with blue lips
and tattooed cheeks

'Waiata' means song in Maori. The neighbour was one Bob Rori, komatua of Ngati Raukawa.
(first published in Singing at Sunrise, Sviatko Associates, 1992.)

Rupert M Loydell

2006-11-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE DEAD

Tombstones and signposts,
terrible things that happened.

Owing death to the world,
he wasted time going native,

a slow life slowed down
to promote the unutterable,

embracing a religion
of resentment and denial.

Compulsive nomads, we still
traverse the desert of time.

© Rupert M Loydell

Helên Thomas

2006-11-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

the culinary
puffer fish as metaphor
for my cutting words

The Japanese word
‘sushi’ means ‘it is sour’
sometimes it’s lethal

blowfish or puffer
by another name fugu
often is fatal

prepare for repast
take out prandial peril
tetrodotoxin

deadly delicious
clean cuts render edible
go gall bladder, guts

bile free and spineless
sound bites edited; souped up
vitriol punctured

unsayable truths
filleted for consumption
in palatable portions

raw cyanide, sliced,
diced, redesigned, redefined
‘that’s nice’, served with rice

Attila The Stockbroker

2006-09-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

OH FOR THE DAYS WHEN ‘SPAM’ WAS JUST A MONTY PYTHON SKETCH

Thanks to the internet
my wife is a very happy woman.
My penis is now forty-seven feet long it stays erect for weeks at a time
and it is garlanded by hundreds of genuine Rolex watches
acquired with the millions I have won
in various Albanian lotteries
and the billions generously deposited in my accounts
by the grateful executors of the wills
of innumerable African tribal chiefs
all mysteriously deceased
along with their entire extended families
in improbably gruesome lawnmower accidents in Liechtenstein.
My account with Lloyds has been suspended.
(I don’t have one.)
My wife’s breasts
enlarge and reduce, spontaneously,
as we use our 95% discounted software
to gaze at the pictures of our free timeshare apartments
enjoying continuous multiple orgasms
whilst admiring our genuine Chinese historical artefacts
purchased online from Hong Kong.
Our garden is full of imported rubber.
Not rubber sex toys
or even rubber boots
just: rubber.
I have more free Coldplay MP3s
than you could wave a suicide note at.
I also have Kate Moss Suction Power.
I don’t know what that is,
but I am hoping it may be useful
next time the toilet needs unblocking.
I now know the Cyrillic alphabet
and the Polish for
‘are you embarrased about your size?’
Every morning, a new surrealist word juxtaposition appears in my inbox
as the spammers seek to avoid the filter.
It turk may bake!
Crabmeat be Paris!
Out evoke in robins!
Decomposing lark’s vomit engulf Crystal Palace!
(ok, I mad the last one up.)
And, to prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction
in our brave new world,
my website is recommended
as one of the top fifty stockbroking sites
on many search engines.

Now that really is Pythonesque.

ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER
http://www.attilathestockbroker.com
http://www.myspace.com/attilastockbroker
.

Lemn Sissay

2006-09-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

The Man In The Hospital

At the hospital, there is a man, who walks the corridors
In his nightclothes and in the deadly nightshade
I have watched him from my bed the past five months
I pretend to be asleep. Sleep is where I pretend
Morning will come.

I have come to know the sand paper sound
Of silence broken by his dragging, druggy feet
I have come to know the sound of his mumbling
Stumbling words spoken as he steps
through strips of moonlight, broken.

I hear through the mental stillness the his depth of illness
He walks through the shadow of the valley of breath.
Surrounded by the incoming outgoing air of the dying
Of us waiting to exhale and bated to inhale..

I am tired. So tired. So. Tired.
My bed is covered with fresh grass and night sweats:
Dew, my dog, a red setter, deft and gentle steps through the ward door
she pitter patters her way past the other beds
Hunches her shoulders and dives upwards onto mine.
She stretches by my feet - a nightingale sings
I am surrounded by breathing it is the sound of the sea
He is coming. He is coming I hear his shuffling feet
The rag and bone man with all that’s dated. I raise my eyelid slightly
It takes tremendous effort. The effort of the Egyptians
Pulling the stones to the pyramid at sunrise. I raise my eyes

He’s at the door of the ward facing foreward.
He stares straight ahead. A head. Straight. Stares.
“there is no illness, there is no illness –
No aids! There is no such illness”.
The others wake too, too tired to argue:
to hear the tears in his lies, the lies in his tears;
to see the fear in his eyes through the eye of his fears

Lemn Sissay BBC World Service Aids Concert Nov 2003

Todd Swift

2006-08-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

This

This thing
This another

This fuss
This bother

This bargain
This basement

This Roger
This Casement

This hammer
This nail

This church
This sale

This nook
This cranny

This Ardant
This Fanny

Rosie Lugosi

2006-08-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

Off my head

They could tell straightway that I was off my head
when I didn’t have to cringe on entering
the room. There was all that extra space above
my neck. I liked the lightness, the sense that there
was nothing to worry about; or rather; nothing
to worry with. I couldn’t understand
why they looked so disgusted: I was happy,
wasn’t I? Someone new threw up.
Apparently it wasn’t decent, strolling around without
a by-your-leave. I left. All the twisting
between my shoulders gone for good. The self-
doubt wiped away. I shook out the contents
of my bag into the nearest bin.
A voice shrieked, I’ve found your head! I ran.

(C) Rosie Lugosi

Gill McEvoy

2006-07-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Taking Possession.

As if someone had been modelling bird-legs
and these were the rejects,

a jangle of scrawny metal legs and feet
is thrust in my palm. They shiver

on the car seat, clink and jingle,
a tangle of brass and steel joggling about.

I nose into the driveway, slow, unsure:
it feels like trespassing.

But no-one comes to check if I'm a threat -
I stand alone on the doorstep,

sorting through the bunch, key after key,
till one at last slides in

and with slow grind and turn
unlocks the future that lurks inside.

.
.

Michael Horovitz

2006-07-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

..

..............in Paris

. . . arise at dawn from
foam rubber blue pillow
pink blanket piss flush
brush teeth – miss the feel
of rush mats underfoot as
in London – but never mind
that – I may be a Londoner
but this is Paris – down the
stairs jumping 3-at-a-time
out to the forecourt – ‘Good-
Day Sunshine’ – ask young girls –
student couples – restaurateurs
opening their doors for breakfast
– for directions – fart belch
buy croissant & apple turnover –
munch in streets (‘a small turn-
over’) – read messages on walls
wind way through streets wide &
narrow – just noticing mosaic
of cobbles on streets – historic
architectures of church & lion’s
mouths & classic statues –
bleach & iron smocked nuns in
convent vestibules – flamboyant
sexy walks of Paris business-ladies
lines from the past – ‘A l’ombre
des arbres et jeunes filles’ –
fall on grass in Luxembourg
Gardens tall trees & voices
in them laugh & rustle
their skirts & leaves
– so young – so green
‘Les lauriers sont coupés’
– the garden of love
open & seen – flowers toss
their heads in the breeze
– young lovers swing
their hips – I sneeze
for the earth is full
of sky today – & the sky
replete with sun – & birds
quietly jingling – their beaks
still snatching the
last shreds of night
plying darker lines of melody
across the dazzling noonday light . . .

from Wordsounds & Sightlines (1994),
reprinted with kind permission of the author

Available by mail order from: New Departures, PO Box 9819, London W11 2GQ – sent by return of post on receipt of £7.99 cheque to ‘Michael Horovitz’ – more info via www.poetryolympics.com
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