In my head

 you and I

a billion times

the starburst

of our lives

brighter

a trillion times

multiplied

the lips fingers

and dangled words

gentler

a thousand times

one trillion

love

Details of Poetry and Flash Fiction Competition

 

The Allingham Festival is an annual festival in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. This year it takes place from Nov 2nd to Nov 6th. The competition closing dates are coming up pretty soon though. Check out the entry details  at https://www.allinghamfestival.com/fiction-poetry-competitions

Schools would be more useful if they supported students' passions

 

His mind sparks explosions in four cylinders, maybe six,

pistons rise and fall, connecting rods turn the crankshaft,

clutch flywheel disengaged a moment, gears shifted and

torque in the wheels altered. His engine purrs; he mulls

turbo with or without variable compression, and always

finds quadratic equations and poetry hinder performance.

Now

 

1. Juggling splintered sunlight

     head lost in that globe

2. Walking on a sea of fallen leaves

     kicking up happy days

3. Stringing them along a daisy-chain

    seeing them wink as they pass

4. Tuning into starlings

    up and down the short-wave.

Survision 11 now online + James Tate Prize

Issue 11 featuring 32 poets at http://survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm  and submissions for the James Tate Prize for a poetry chapbook accepted to the end of August. You can find more information about it here: http://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm

In her Distance (revised)

 

I look at her,

childlike

in her distance;

a curl

dreaming.

Recognize

her solitariness;

the dream

a wall

around her;

a cold 

realisation:

this primal

distance

between us.

 

Face

 

I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.

When I turn forward again my face has been gouged,

there are splinters from the corners of my eyes,

my mouth is a mean line.

My eyes are pools;

their former blue submerged,

indistinct as dapples are in the shallows.

I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.

When I turn forward again I have my father’s face;

he is staring at nothing;

life has grown quiet inside him.

Receding

 

Watching you on the pier

as the ferry moved out to sea,

your face

your waving arm

you in a cluster of people

the cluster of people

the harbour

the town

the headland

the coast

and memory

like looking into a lighted grotto

seeing the tableau receding,

becoming distant

becoming a light bulb

eventually a star

among all the stars

identical to all the stars.

Untitled

 

                                                        People:

we may, indeed, pass each other unaware.

                                                           Fish:

be that close, but almond-shaped sleekness,

pass on, never know.

                                                         Murk:

in which we swim and do not see, search

but not find what is all around.

A memory of my mother

 

Rows of empty seats, regimented,

plastic, steel legged,

but one, my mother watching me

signing books

with pride as I continue.

Years on, my mother among

those empty rows of seats,

smiling,

dead

but her smile remembered;

memory precarious as steam;

memory that fills purses

money can never reach.

His Face, his heart

 

Parched landscape;

a sandy wilderness

deeply gorged.

The geologic processes

ended now;

his eyes,

dried up water-holes,

partially filled with

some long-gone personal tragedy.

I found his heart,

a rusted old truck, abandoned,

curiously distant from any road.

Map

 

All the days that have ever been;

the flowing rivers, 

the dried-up rivers;

the old bones, 

the new bones;

the grain of all our songs:

with this map you understand

this is the place that we are,

topography of our souls;

we tramp it living and dead.

Post Accident

 

Her body is pain;

birds flap inside that mesh;

she won’t entertain it, but

a facial alphabet pinballs momentarily.

Her eyes give her away;

corundum-hard crystallised agony;

beautiful too,

bullet-like.

Snow.

 

Snow, it seemed to me, had the power to take away the sins of the world.

With that dazzling perfection, men’s minds could only be turned to the glorious

and beautiful; their hearts becoming salmon, medallions reflecting magnificent

light, must surely leap from the curve of their every-day lives.

Snow made the world pristine as Heaven is. Shining, peaceful, flawless;

to walk on fresh fallen snow was to walk an unsullied landscape; to walk in its

unearthly glow, which had the power to make even winter’s pitch black nights bright,

was, to me, a miraculous restoration of sight.

When the snow started to fleck the air outside our classroom, we all ran to the windows;

it was to be expected, even the teacher stepped towards it, allowing himself to be

mesmerised by the slow climbing down of billions of spiders; nature’s most astounding

coup, as the earth was prised from the doings of man, wonder restored, the opportunity

to write ourselves afresh on the empty canvas of the world.

A track into the woods

 

A track into the woods,

turning out of view in the distance,

dragged me from the road

to the mysteries hidden in the shade

beneath trees,

in the darkness of tunnels.

That still flickering excitement

of childish adventures,

those reached only

through almost invisible entrances,

lightened my steps,

trimmed my years,

diverted me from the endless trudge

along those roads straightened by habit,

paved for safety.