Two Poems by Paul Bavister

Campsite

The campsite sloped down to the beach,
and every morning I ran between the tents,
then jumped into the freezing sea.
I hadn’t been told it was only a holiday,
that we’d be back in a week.

I sat on a scorching grey rock,
looked out to sea,
forgot the fear of being beaten at school,
then smelled smoke and turned
to a line of fire ripping through the gorse.

Weasels, lizards, snakes and mice
poured through the stone wall.
We ran down to the beach,
and I couldn’t see through the smoke
to know if the tent was lost.

I worried, but thought we could
buy another, still not knowing
that in a couple of hours
we’d be on the road home,
me in the back seat

dreaming of the next campsite,
not even thinking
about spending another ten years
getting beaten senseless
at the school that made me.

Koi

When I heard the ornamental gardens
had been flooded by the river,
I thought of cherry blossom spinning
on the churning surface
and maples knocked from their pots.

Then I remembered the koi
in the deep ponds
and how they would have surged forward,
flashes of orange and white
in the water pouring into town.

As I waded through to reach my flat,
everything in the muddy water
became a koi – a plastic bag
caught on a branch, inflating, deflating,
a traffic cone, a fluorescent jacket.

When I climbed onto the town hall steps,
the water calmed and the koi
were all around, their whites and oranges
turning on the surface, reflected
in the windows of the flooded shops.

Four Poems by Mark Young

Doodle #7569

 

Happenstance happens too fast

to ever stand up to investigation;

but still we welcome it, smile when

 

we fall upon it, smile even when it

falls upon us. Some remember &

go with their mother's advice — never

 

look a gift horse in the mouth. I tend

to prefer the pedantic Louis Pasteur —

chance favors the prepared mind.

 

 

telescopic nightmares

 

I am learning about how fish

disrupt sleep. Their imagery

tends to feel very real, inhab-

its cold, deep water, feeds on

other fish, possesses immense

power to affect one's life. Their

telescopes can capture evidence

of possible alien cities on Prox-

ima B. The strong suction cups

allow them to be attached to

larger predators & grab prey

in total darkness. At night they

prowl those large basalt plains

on the Moon that are called

seas because, from a distance,

that's exactly what they look like.

 

 

Another "Just So Story"

 

Left abandoned on the high

veldt, I notice how parts of

speech often do not hang to-

gether. Rather run their own

races — all the fullstops coal-

esced in a ball by a waterhole,

the commas top to tail in a

daisy chain that winds through

the grass & on up to the distant

hills. As for the conditional

clauses — well. . . Sometimes

words might stop to talk to

me, but because there is no co-

herence to their delivery they

are left lying on the ground

like scat, unheeded until some-

one like Rudyard Kipling sees

them & theorizes how leopards

might have come by their spots.

 

 

A line from Anna Akhmatova

 

The drummer & his quartet were

afraid to leave the environments they

knew, were also unaware of a certain

person held in detention. Add in the

 

small things overlooked each day,

those poems never read. & even when

they paid attention, they were care-

less. Micro-signals lose impact when

 

they're overly polished. Leave room

to drift, remember times when songs

were heard that brought back mem-

ories & think: she wanted storms.

Two Poems by John Sweet

i do not like anything anymore

and everyone here not dead

is dying,

and so what are we

still waiting for?

stick around as

long as you want, but the

future was never going

to be anyone’s

friend

portrait w/ still life, c. 1984

you and i like some frightened

child’s dream of blue skies

no words,

only images

the sleepy deaths of

summer afternoons on

burnt hill road

the inevitability of powerlines

you grow up and then you

move away and then

you stop believing in the idea of home and,

when you drown,

you do it quietly

you do it well

the trick here

is to pay attention

study the art of passive suicide

let the junkies dig their sad little graves,

let the priests be fattened for slaughter

zero is the

only number that matters

all kingdoms fall

never thought about this when

i was kissing you,

when i was undressing you, when the

spaces between us had disappeared

never considered mortality

never breathed in the poison

of government, of religion,

of false morality

was too busy laughing to

believe in those

next 30 years of unrelenting drought