Poetry Prose Our Writers #2

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OUR 2ND ISSUE STARTS HERE:

The Kerlogue

By Michael O'Connor

Tears filled the old German’s eyes

When he saw the black and white

Photo of himself, a frightened

Teenager, plucked from the Bay

Of Biscay by a neutral Irish ship,

And remembered that time, the smell

Of explosives and burning oil,

His ship destroyed, his comrades

Floundering in a sea of

Hopelessness, and somewhere,

Seabirds calling, as if there were

A world apart from this one:

A gentler place where seagulls

Screamed and dived and bobbed

Upon the waves and people

Leaned on railings, watching them.

Bio: Michael O’Connor is 54, and has won a few poetry competitions, and had a poem published in The Irish Times, so let’s assume he is from Ireland! He is a teacher in a Montessori teacher training college. He has 4 children, a huge handful of responsibility.

Editorial Comments: The Kerlogue was an Irish ship that picked up survivors from a sunken German warship in the Bay of Biscay. Years later an old German gentleman was in the Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire. There was a feature about the Kerlogue and when he saw the newspaper cuttings and photos, the German burst into tears. He recognized himself in the photos. Don’t you think history is worth a poem?

 

 

Through Victor's Eyes

By Steven Pasfield

He sits there reading a book

Just looking at the book

Not reading the page

The same page for a long time

Now he stares over the page

Through his glasses

Wondering about the day ahead

What to do how quick can it go

When will all this misery end?

His soul mate Maureen

The woman he loved

Six months since

A life time he thinks

Has passed away

Gone from his life!

The house so empty and cold

The dinner table so bare

Tears well up in his eyes

Of all the lost memories

No-one to share his thoughts with

He just sits there day after day

Looking at the same page

The same book.

Bio:  I’m 44, and have been writing poetry for five years now. I am a member of the poetry society in London, England. I am also dyslexic which makes it hard to write to the standard that I would like.

Editorial Comment:  Steven Pasfield should be an inspiration for all of us with handicaps, whether it be dyslexic, depression, or crippled-we all need hope, we all struggle. I hope his wonderful poem above is an inspiration to all:

http://folklore41.spaces.live.com/   http://poetryman44.blogspot.com/

Salad Days
by, Martin Jervis
In the garden shed of half painted days
Rusty spades and rakes strung on hooks
Drawers of pea seeds in layers of dust
And wheel-less barrows of dry black oak
Amongst the weathered canes and chicken
Shit my grandfather sat and lit his pipes
Curling secret smoke from my grandmother's
Eye and rattling the air with his war gas cough.
He sowed the earth with abundant feed
Corpulent marrows and carmine beets
Viridian beans and trench fed cucumbers
Whilst I chased cabbage whites with a
Beating branch and knocked bees off flowers
With a squirting bottle of watery strafe.
                    
He smelled of fresh earth and tobacco stains
Pockets full of matches and dry runner beans
Seed packets and labels and thick pencil stubs
A bulged corduroy jacket of jetsam filled his
Hazel eyes clear and focused on one plot of earth
He scoured pipe black carbon with a handy stalk
Knowing his salad days growth was bolting on.

Snapshots of a World at War

By Juliet Wilson

Spring in our city

brings a clarity to the air

that cannot be found in dust storms

in the Middle East.

Fatima has worn the headscarf

since 11 September 2001,

still feels stronger for it

despite the scars on her face.

From a bunker of tinned foods

Ken watches war 24 hours on TV,

sleeps with a gas mask by the bed,

doesn't answer his door any more.

TVs switch between live from the frontline

and war-game diagrams,

where victory like death is virtual

and military hardware wins points.

Union flags burn in angry cities,

neighbourhoods disappear

as precision is redefined.

The promise of freedom seems hollow.

Staring at each passing rucksack,

you nervously finger

the cyanide pill in your pocket

and pray before boarding the plane.

Reflections on Leaving

By Juliet Wilson

She keeps her eyeon the rear view mirror

he could easily hide among so many cars

but as the road behind her empties

bright as the red glow of sunset

she feels her heart begin to lighten

as the road ahead defines the future.

Author Bio:  Juliet Wilson blogs as Crafty Green Poet at 
http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com. Her poetry has been
 widely published, most recently in Orbis and Haiku Scotland. She is the  
editor of  the poetry blogmag Bolts of Silk.

Editorial Comment:  I love Juliet Wilson's simple, clean, clear use of concrete images.  Her poems are very readable, very real to life events.  She is also one of my favorite human beings human beings for her concern about the world environment.  No Americans, I know you are thinking that word "neighbourhoods" is mispelled in the first poem-not if you live in Wales, England, and Scotland.

In the Twilight of Pigs

By Ray Succre

Severed from damp bread, we crusts

on the plate's latest rim have adopted breath.

How fearful a mouth is to droop at our taste,

to worry our brown bits are the curls

of some more vehement feed!

Do you remember, fellow curl,

the twilight of pigs, when ships taught the sea

to part, and even our fulsome bread

smelled of iron?

Who sailed those ships were solid whos;

they vanished riding the wooden bits

to sea-specks at day's last arch.

Those composed pigs, rigid still and amid

the hurry, they forgot the ships and ate the bread,

caught in the era, scrolling belch to grunt

and belonging to the sea.

Those sated pigs are gone into the tracts

of new ships now.

They are still devoured in the twilight,

their stomachs burst on bread.

We crusts atop the plate have learned to breathe,

and we remain, but the uncomposed last mouth

that awaits us, it knows no hesitation,

and will take us for feed as we curl.

Author Bio: Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Small Spiral Notebook, and Coconut, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. He tries hard.

Editorial Comment:   Images can start concrete and end abstract; or images can start abstract and end concrete-often it is a matter of style. But, be honest, isn’t that part of the fun part?

Over & Over Again

 

I could just lie down

and let you walk across me,

like a canvas

where You leave

streaks of Your unique purpose

on the lines and fissures

of my trusting flesh.

creating Your passions,

dipping Your brushes and flinging

Your mad mixes of colors wildly.

You are creating me aren’t You?

Over and over again,

You are creating Me.

 

Author's Bio: My Name is Pamela Lawrence, I'm a poet and a dreamer. Having lived for 61 years in the suburbs of Los Angeles, my husband and I retired to the country in Ohio in 2006. I'm a mother, a Grandmother of 10 and a Great Grandmother of one. I've been writing poetry for a lifetime, letting it fly off my fingertips landing where it will. I sold quotes to a greeting card company in the 70's, and have been published in various magazines thru the years.

Editorial Comment:  Pamela has a simple, direct, magic of imagery that carries through her poetic tales.

goodbye, Anne Sexton,
By David McLean

goodbye, Anne Sexton,
though i never knew you
i heard the weeping
of the penned-in children, too,
and saw their flesh flake away
as you left their tiny suicides
behind you for your night.

your faith you wrapped
into a book in your marked
arms, remarkable seeing your
visions tele-grammatic
appendages to your death,
from how very far you came
and left us to this injury, your brutal
lesion that obsesses me,
the need to leave our enowned
possession, His Ereignis and this
exorcist, the demons that feed
on me in our need. i could almost
wish to believe you reached his shore
and beached there, forgiven whore
in God's demanding ecstasy,
the learned lore of damage
and bleeding veins fruitful
as trees in spring's reluctant greening
leaves you tore from heaven's ledger
and the forgotten shoals of piscine
pains you dredged there, careless,
like us and all the drugs we forget to take
today, painful Nirvana for the feckless
rats we are - fuck their sucker's heaven,
it's not on your star.

so goodbye, Anne Sexton, i never
knew you, but nor
did you.

Editorial Comments:  David McLean. was born in Wales in 1960 though he lived in Sweden since 1987.  A chapbook “a hunger for mourning” with 52 poems is available from Erbacce-press and Lulu at http://stores........lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1277957. More information at http://www.myspace.com/david_mclean and http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/.  David has great potential, but has a tendency to force me to the dictionary more than I care to visit it; and his illiteration is a bite overdone-but, this potenital is truly unlimited.

 

"You're Eyes Only" by Nicole Zajon


My dreams are being tampered with

Whims taking their stance along the pillowcase

Timidly tiptoeing towards my two lips

Kissing me so sweet with such a sincere taste

Taking my breathe away

And placing it inside of your lungs

This cannot be true

I couldn't possibly be breathing

Exhaling--inhaling--absorbing you

Touching you

As the darkness hides your face

I wonder how many times I will come to this place

How many times will I let myself be fooled by this
hollow fantasy

Of the passionate artistry that makes up this tender
game of discovery

How many times will I let you capture me in this
reverie

Tie me up and hold me down with spider spun vision
weaving

While lucidly loving me--you leave me doubting and
believing

Craving your mystery I cannot stop dreaming
 


"Call It What You Want" by Nicole Zajon



This secret is sour in my mouth
I have not acquired the taste it takes to swallow
And cannot find the strength to spit it out
Instead I follow a luminous path
Hoping this mistake will be my last
My past is overbearing
While you look into my eyes
Starry and glorified
Just like my sweet enterprise
Holding it's ground
Never willing to capsize
Not even with the weight of my own lies
And their reverberating sound
Only tightening the ties to which I am bound
Why is it that as the dandelion dies...wishes are born
How many sacrifices must be made before I finally
learn
That the moon and sun take turns
They both take time
I fell the sky's pulsing from a distant airline
And I wonder how much easier it should be
To stop the passion voluntarily bleeding from my heart
It would all be fine--if it weren't comepletely
tearing me apart
How hard can it be to wisp away on a wind
Being kissed softly by endearing lips
Before ma

king my way to a promising freedom

Bio/Editorial Comments:  Nicole Zajon, 21 years old, from Maine, previously published, Mastondon Denist, online Journal, now opens her world to Poetic Legacy readers. Nicole has a self image nearly as bright and large as her imagery. She is talented, “If it sounds like Nicole’s writing about you, she probably is.”   Look for many more fine pieces of poetry from this young, emerging writer.