Thursday, December 31, 2015

Poetry By Elena Botts


blithewood

when the trees shivering pyres of warm like color fire

and contemplation of bay so grey centered,

reflective of the sky (her eyes)

we, wading into the nothing.

into the there was an aftermath here once, there was a grand garden and a story, oh yes a story and the

brave blushing people in their finery and the flowers, all dripping hyacinth, dahlia, aster in flown stars of

summer fallen into the ground and even the sky was larger somehow but then

mansion brick might realize itself shocked whiter under the moon, even our little radiances as we realized

ourselves, impossibly standing under

the sky infinite

just bare somethings in the dark, just forever

always expiring, well better then! the unimaginable



later, i was dancing with myself.

when i'm away in the blue

night like to be a sound tucked into an outer dark. i dream of you

senseless and unbroken across the stars.

you're a miracle for nobody. something came true but it wasn't for,

it only was. and i,

and you.

in your absence, i dream of everything.

real, vivid dreams.

blossoms coloring the spine of my stubborn bends and unreality inflating my cheeks with a blue cold and

writing me dumb

into the dead sky. it's wintertime.

so you're vacant and meaningful, so you're

into the soul, so you're you,

your body in the rain. i'll go outside. i'll meet nobody,

motionful in the dark. you can wait there, nobody, you can wait,

counting the times your reflection passes you by in the puddling future of us shrouded

in the present of your presence of please stay awhile i care so terribly about you i think i might die

and come alive again in the dark it doesn't matter in the dark.

i am into the earth and for nothing too.

you are the story as it occurs. mostly, i am missing myself.


Poet Elena Botts



before the fall,

the sky in a lilac rose before it falls,

scatter the winter trees.

until quick the blue shroud

pulled over the earth and all of us under

expiring the breath of our bodies

into a dulled omnipotence.

maybe souls glow low in the beckoning

night shudders.

if this were a love note for you, it would get

lost in the ambiguity. but

it is a comparison darkness. if this were a letter

sent by sea,

it would be lost,

no one would ever read. a terrible and immersive blue.

it has me gone and nebulous.

but i can't spell my own

luminescence if this were written to

the moon and all the nighttime cars through the nighttime roads, headlight countryside,

the plummeting.

you're the only one in the dark

enough to make light.



i'm sad that you cut your hair

i remember how it was full of care dark dense.

the storm gathered itself up and left.

did the fierce life of your body undo itself

easy i think the plummet. is it somewhere, the locks i mean

but i could not care for them

still, i think, somewhere your loss degrades. maybe it soils a floor. probably, the wind.

the wind, probably blows you quickly nowhere, you, a nothing, into nowhere. i think of you often

i think of the blue under the bridges when i think of you i think of how bay grips the mind of sky and

pulls under, us, into a gravity

as you lose, as by falling, loss, as by

and in falling, there a simple suicide. a blue smear against

i'm sad that you cut your hair.

surely it must be somewhere, your loss hidden underneath a stairwell i hope where sunlight steps carefully

through the afternoon and no one has to be anywhere,

i mourn your hair quietly all through the daylight hours i sit still in the staircase and tread nothing and

bathe myself with bare hands and no water in the waterfall ing of great light, of a simple god looking

down and smiling an unknowable smile but now i mean

the misery of an omnipotence that is no one

and he is no one. so where are you?

we are all gentle no ones treading or tossing because i remember how like a sea

it was when i craved to move fingers through the terrible quivering skiffs

destined for no place. i remember that night

when against the timbers we roamed motionless and you motionful, cupped yourself in your own hands

and i held you tight, inward, as though you might implode, a little star done in on itself all at once,

dying in rapturous light but then just a soft sigh of incandesce into the heavens.

you exhale, i respire. i hold no one. he is a cold body at dusk and

his hair cropped close and dull against the neck of him, the

always again i find you dying and then must save no body and i cannot even save no body so

i close your dead eyes and walk into a black, close night.



last autumn frost

the woodland architecture huddled up

into a mind of late autumnal

dreaming,

i cannot remove the lichen bodies

where they dwell in steadfast

frosted epochs

so i buried in the bay and froze my own

terrible bones, thinking of

eyes harder than any eyes

a blacker blue

than beacon soul shining outright and your pearly nose,

lined lips without miss you

don't care about the rest you just

rise away trailing

your left

whispered hand knowing what it is you know

when we fall upwards into a periwinkle sky

that can't or won't erase

the deadly stars of our fated minds,

held in but alien universes inside.



i've been talking to stars

i have no home but home of my heart not even four am aunt's blankets heaving dreams of nothing in the

ancient house, a mexican menagerie while che guevara the parrot is learning how to say good morning,

sam the monstrous cat needs your attention forever my grandfather has feeble magic, he is inexorable,

unmeasurable, uneraseable and soon he will be limitless although grandmother has already transcended

the realms of this world and the endless sunshine it becomes harder to move if only i were an idea.

i chose the mind space that is screen less windowing to the sky! was so beauteous! horrific! i was looking

for your black eyes in all the dumb boys moving like horses in the thunderstruck afterwards of rain,

restless come rage in the dirt with me young dear i do not know where i am knowing was a fond memory

drenched in sunshine, set out to dry on a childhood kitchen countertop my dad walks in talking the birds.

my mom raging her hands through six centuries time dispelled by you and me, she's still frantic

steering wheel and raisins in the oatmeal. she picks it off the floor while she's driving. miniature beacon

stoplights got nothing to say and the family cat. closing the doors it's always summer nightfall. we go

each to a dark enclosed space to sink our thoughts in outpourings. i just want to grab your heart with my

bare hands while mine was a vessel on its side leaking light.

gnight little moon and the stars too sorry for the black night sorry for always sorry for the care the awful

stare sorry don’t know what you're doing i walked behind the old building today almost wandered in

through window but someone's living there now stood between two windows in parallel for the first time

noticed the small tree in the middle my soul caught here once there had been something beautiful but the

ravages of world seem to keep us human useless always the heart ruinous being what it is we are here was

something beautiful before it was gone we couldn't keep the universe. but it was



we were in a perilous

even the moon, you

in your pale abstractions and i facing you whenever you spoke but less so for the words,

less so

and in this anything, there was something measured about us, an other realm that wouldn't become or

something about how your hands were different than how i thought they'd be but mine were the same as

you knew already with your black blue eyes transfixed and your motionlessness the way you were

easy speechless and i always so regardless like

when i'm with you i'll miss you to the wicked moon and so sail away

all undone on sheets reamed in starry schemes and fixed to mast pivotless wandering the unreedemable

blackness in which oh and even the moon was taken

for you, for you i sailed to the moon and never or ever came away again

as in an unbearable chaos that which made me, even the cosmos were caught

in love and in that moment of awe in what is was they were seeing, the beauteous,

the wide sky yawned and gasped

and held nothing, nothing

held it. nothing to keep us, me and you. nothing because the universe was so struck

it forgot

so all fell to a fabulous chaos,

and i never came back again for you or anyone at all.



i'm still here

i am so thinking of you

good morning you sweet thing.

so much so that breathing is new to me, your universe,

you, your stars.

i mean the unknown frames me,

keeps me.

let me be still and silent with you

just want to curl

sunshine/divine/your eyes

a side like a cliff face

your bones always like vertiginous

dear terrible earth, put me to sleep

you must be a stranger to be in my cloud because your stars are only of your own small burning

brightness. and my stars are only of my own. only one's own little light to love anybody.

as also i must be alien unto the earth else i cannot by beauteous broken know a thing for what it is

unless i am this strange soul light of no light at all but mine so i might

be in a place, the universe and then so

give everything of it.

that is, my light is only mine so that it be for you.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Five Poems By John D. Robinson

John D Robinson was born in 63 in the UK; he began writing poetry aged 16 and published 1st poem a year later; many of his poems have appeared in the small press and online publications including; Bareback Lit, Red Fez, Dead Snakes, Pulsar, The Commonline Journal,The Kitchen Poet, Mad Swirl, The Chicago Record, Poetic Diversity, Your One Phone Call, The Clockwise Cat and upcoming poems appearing in Ink Sweat & Tears, The Legendary, Message in a Bottle, The Sentinel Literary Quarterly; he is married with 1 daughter, 2 grandchildren, 3 cats, 1 dog and he loves to drink wine and stare into space whilst listening to gentle classical music.


A BAD HAND
Even as a young boy of
4 years old he was odd;
I mean, he would never
look at you but clean
through you like you
weren’t there at all and
most of the time he was
eerily silent;
I was a decade older and
would occasionally child-
mind; I’d hear his mother
return in the early hours
of the morning with some guy
and make out I was asleep
upon the sofa, I listened
as they enjoyed themselves
and he never stirred
from his sleep;
leaving school he
attempted to work for
a living but things
didn’t work-out; he
couldn’t take being told
what to do and he
couldn’t get the fuck up
in the mornings and
he wandered away
from home and became
a slave to alcohol and
drugs and day to
day survival;
over time he and
I would meet in
passing and every time
he’d react differently,
he’d be friendly or
suspicious of me, or
he’d be silent or
ignore me or be overly
animated;
After numerous threats
and acts of robbery and
violence towards his
mother the Law courts
prohibited him from
nearing her home and
literally just hours after
she had died in
hospital, he broke into
her flat and stayed for
2 or 3 days eating and
drinking all that was
there and sold anything
of his mother’s that
he could and then
48 hours later he was
found dead of a drugs
O.D in his
rented room aged
42;
Several weeks prior
to his death he had
been savagely beaten
by money-owed dealers;
very few were surprised
or shocked by the
circumstances of his
passing; several people
commented that
‘It was always on the cards’

The poet John D. Robinson



A PRIVATE READING
Moments after she began
reading, she began
laughing and she
continued giggling
until she finished
reading a poem
about sex with a
former lover;
I sat next to her
enjoying her laughter
as I have done
for many years,
as she handed me
back the paper she
said with a grin
“Yeah, you’ve
exaggerated it a
little haven’t you?”
I looked at her
and said “Maybe”
she laughed again
and then said
“Well, maybe I
should write some
of my exploits down
in some poems, how
about that?”
I thought about it
for a while and then
said to her
“So you haven’t
told me everything?”
she smiled again and
said “Maybe not
everything”
“Not everything
huh?” I said
“A woman can use
her hot imagination too, ”
she said
“I’d like to read that”
I said
“It’s better to live
the fantasy out” she said
on the verge of
laughing,
“Can you make that
a promise?” I asked
“At our age’ she said
smiling widely.
‘I don’ think so”
I nodded silently
agreeing .




GETTING BY BACK THEN
We lived in a cold water
hovel above a 2nd hand
bookshop;
Frieda was an elderly
lesbian and she loved
to handle books and
young women and
when times were
tough I’d drop
downstairs and sell her
at bottom dollar,
my 1st edition
black sparrow press
Bukowski books,
and I’d beg her not
to put them on the
shelves and she’d give
me a week to buy them
back at the sold price
and she’d give us coffee
and bread and tins
of salmon and I’d
search the streets for
tobacco and cigarette
butts and sell whatever
I could so we could eat
and drink and we were
loose and young and
now we find ourselves
as grandparents; living
comfortable and
Frieda and the bookshop
long gone and the
Bukowski books long ago
sold for long-forgotten
meals and drugs and
alcohol and broken
windows and rusty
door-handles and
youth now
laying quiet and spent
and longing for the
lazy back-yard of
middle-age.



A RIGHTEOUS OBSTACLE
I had some business to take
care of in the hospital and as
usual made my way to the
nurses station and I knocked
on the door and a guy, maybe
a few years older than I
opened up the door;
I didn’t recognise him and
I couldn’t see his I.D. badge
as it was hidden beneath
his waistcoat but I knew
he was an outside
visitor from some piss-poor
do-gooder service and I
explained myself and he
appeared awkward and
guarded the office and began
to tell me that he had some
work to do and he began
to point with a limp hand
at some chairs scattered
in the corridor opposite
the office where I could sit
and wait and as he gestured
I said loudly “Pratt” and
then I slowly turned and
walked away and found
somebody helpful;
the following day I
learnt that the guy was
a hospital Chaplin and
he had been rather
shaken and unsettled by
my apparently menacing
appearance and attitude
and I thought, fuck me,
I had been soft on
the pompous old bastard
and next time, maybe,
I’ll do the right thing and
I’ll clench my mouth
and go find some place to
smoke a cigarette and
pray silently for my
treacherous soul.


THAT MORNING; EVERY MORNING
One morning
when he was
6 years old
he woke up to
find his 4 year
old sister lying on
the floor beside
his bed;
she was still, cold,
dead
and he couldn’t
wake her up and he
didn’t understand;
he went to find his
other younger
3 years old sister
and he found her
in bed, she was
still, cold, dead
and he couldn’t
wake her up and
he didn’t understand
and he began to
scream for his mama
but she didn’t come,
she wasn’t there, he was
alone and he couldn’t
understand and he began
to cry;
several hours later
the police found him
alone and crying and
not understanding why
he couldn’t wake up
his little sisters and why
his mama wasn’t
there to cuddle him
and later he
understood that his
mama had murdered
his sisters and that
she had been unwell
and had been taken
to a locked hospital
and he couldn’t
understand why his
mama had killed his
sisters and spared him
and
40 years later he still
doesn’t understand and
he lives his life and
he is humble, truthful
and a sensitive soul
and he lives his life
one
moment at a time
and what
scares
and
warms
him
simultaneously,
is waking up
not knowing what
awaits in the world
as he
opens
his
eyes.