Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Let Me Lead You Into A War Dance

The back of my head faces you,
as I spring forward
with the pride of a lion.
Arm sinews taut
as employed bow strings.
Forehead a jackhammer working
the gravity that surrounds it.
Feet stamping defiance
into the frowning earth.
Throat and lungs screaming
out the barbarian
which has lain dormant,
in the gene that my forefather’s
sent travelling through time
until now.
Within my skin of wrath
I wait not for any of you,
the area behind me
is now your concern.

© Paul Tristram 2008

Published in Decanto, 33rd Issue, February  2008

 

Cramp Tight

Cramp tight
like juvenile delinquency
when 10 o’clock at night
comes around.
Like mongrel dogs
with bellies full of chicken bones,
shitting and spitting frustration
in unknown alphabetical terms.
While tramps kiss wine bottles,
eyes closed,
emulating long, dead love.
And weathercocks amphetaminely spin
until pointing to the eight of swords.
I sit within a tavern
in Falmouth
counting my pocket change
and hoping for a penny
more.

© Paul Tristram 2005

Published in Pulsar, Edition 43, August 2005

They Prescribed Them Valium

 
It was the late 1970’s
the waiting room was full and oppressive,
with weak hearts and fragile minds.
A gathering of single mothers
eagerly waiting for the cure
to that which ate at them all
but again there was no cure,
they did this to themselves.
Unlike their mothers and grandmothers
they had time to be neurotic,
to complain about the obvious
and dislike their own inventions.
It was the late 1970’s
and after 6 long months
at the end of this assembly line
of irritating placebo seekers
you would have prescribed them valium too.

© Paul Tristram 2006

Published in Sarasvati, Issue 22, May/June, 2012



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

Denny E. Marshall- Two Poems

The Clock

In my silence, will time heal all
For constantly I hear her call
All my life never felt so low
The clock in my heart runs so slow

The pain I have time cannot feel
Cut up with words as sharp as steel
The wounds are hidden deep below
The clock in my heart runs so slow

Now the days seem to drag on by
When I was with her time would fly
The ache ticks on I watch it grow
The clock in my heart runs so slow
 

Tax Us

The whole country thinks taxes are too high
More think the American dream a myth
Congress contemplates the limit the sky
The whole country thinks taxes are too high
You get what you pay for is a big lie
Common sense is lost in a labyrinth
The whole country thinks taxes are too high
More think the American dream a myth

Robert Demaree- Two Poems

MOVING PICTURES

Looking at old postcards

Of the town where  I grew up,

Sorrowful Rust Belt burg

On the Schuylkill River:

Two theaters on High Street—

Can you picture it?

Here’s the Hippodrome,

Double-feature Westerns on Saturday:

Ten-year-olds, we called them the

Calvary shows.

And here’s the Strand.

Do they still have ushers at the movies?

Do they wear maroon uniforms

With thick shoulder stuffing?

At sixteen I got a job there

Unbeknownst to my parents,

River of No Return,

With Marilyn Monroe,

Another candle in the wind.

MUSING

I was reading today

Of an author I’d enjoyed,

Former novelist he was called.

Occurred to me to wonder

If one could be a former poet.

Or a retired poet,

Or perhaps a non-practicing poet,

Like a non-practicing

Physician, or Christian,

Or an inactive volcano,

If not extinct.

Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers, April 2007, and  Mileposts, October 2009, both published by Beech River Books, and Things He Thought He Already Knew, published online in 2007 by Slow Trains. The winner of the 2013 Burlington Writers Club Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year. He has had over 650 poems published or accepted by 150 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com 

Douglas Polk- A Poem

A Hearing

helpless,

war lives,

war looms,

politicians,

in protective wombs,

discuss, debate, and decide,

a death and destruction that will never touch them,

drag out photographs of the dead,

a prop needed,

to provoke feelings,

no longer felt within the womb,

let the dead rest in peace,

no need to see the images,

to feel the pain,

you have visited death upon us before,

we know death,

but the question is,

do you?

then why the debate.

Gene McCormick- A Poem

A Box Of Dead Music

The jukebox has stood in the same dark corner
of The Greek’s Bar & Grill for more than half
a century, from the day the doors first opened.
During those years the song selection
has never been updated, not once;
original black vinyl records can be seen
through yellowing plexi-glass offering
scratchy rhythms uncaringly out of date.
A few coins bring sounds recorded by musicians
long dead or who soon would or should be.
Tunes from the antique 45s are recollections,
not horns, guitars, pianos, drums or vocals…
flashbacks of once-vibrant realities.
Dead songs don’t storyboard the present,
can’t portend the future.

A half-full glass of Jack Daniels straight up
sits alone on a bar top decorated by
cigarette burns, the only surface not layered
with a dusty patina.
Three stools down a vacant woman, for rent,
eyes the Jack while trying to cadge
another double scotch.
“I prefer Glenlivet, honey.”—Whiskey and woman
both on consignment and each in need
of a helping hand.

Crazy Old George, keeper of the jukebox,
has a head packed with remembrances: when he
thought of starting a franchise chain of
“The Greek’s,” when he thought of starting
a family, when he thought of starting over.
Same tired tune: memories lacking a tactile soul.

Don’t expect a Happy Hour, not for a minute,
at The Greek’s Bar & Grill.

Daniel Wilcox- Two Poems

The Dog's Bite

The Tali-banned dog fighting and music,
But America permits the dog-bite-
Partying of religious Afghans
In the fanged gamble, their money’d
Heroin poppies up, jagged blooms
Clawing the world market
Leech flowers blossoming deep, needle
In 'Vein' to others circusing the world round engulfed,
And the propped legislature votes
The blooded zenith
To execute apostates,
Ah well so sick
And punish blued wives who left
Hell! For several thousand bills, fighters
Can get out of jail free cards
So much jawing teeth
Dogging our warn flag-budded tail.

So let’s get Syria-ous…


Previously published in a different form
by The Recusant in the U.K., 2008



Gum Up

Notice how ‘theoillogicalies’
Gum up the worded worlds

Stretchnosepuppet the truth
Tongue-twisting

Jaw-chewing, teeth gnawing
It all out of shape
And
Are the ‘dickens-dammed,’
Bubblegummed worst

To remove
From

Undersides of study desks
Or our floored mind



First published in
Poydras Review

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Self-Deceptions II

I will continue
to wallow in
the notion talent
won me my job
instead of serendipity
when the better
well-known writer
quit at the last breath
for a nicer teaching gig
near San Diego.
Ego was allowed
to trump extentuating
favorable factors
which have kept me
in the black
for twenty-two years
but minutely angsted and ennuied
about half as long.

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

crumpled 

 

the smashed

black eyed susan on

the sidewalk reminds me

of my crumpled heart

starved of your love

the sun shines and the clouds

smile their promise,

but i am without you;

walking hurts when it's not

your hand i can hold onto

when i can't lay with you at night

life seems so meaningless

without the sound of your laughter

the brightness of sky dancing

in your winter born eyes,

and if i could do it all over again

i'd find a way to never leave

so maybe this wouldn't have happened

that you'd find someone in my absence

when i was scraping pennies

to return to you -

i didn't want freedom,

all i've ever wanted was your love

your happiness and to watch our dreams

come true together,

but my novel is being published and all i can

feel is the cold tug of regret that you're

not here to share it with me.

Jenna Cicero- Three Poems

The Serpent of Adam in you:

For many years I have tried to forget
the mountains of your flesh that built a home
for me; a cave that wrapped its arms
around the cool of my skin and breathed
it’s dampened breath upon my bones.

I have tried to calm the fire that burns
my heart with bitter flames and lick the wounds
you bore upon me years ago;
the weight you tethered around my chest
in forms of ghosts I never knew.

But I cannot undo the crimson stain
you painted deep across my face; each pore
sings of lust that tore the promise
from the hems of your tattered embrace
that faded from her unknown warmth.

The lies that rested in the truth of your-
self; like tainted fruit upon a pure tree
I sucked the juice right from your mouth
until your shame, it clothed me in leaves
and ripped the life right out of me.



The Art of Miscommunication:

I will never understand the invisible barrier
That blocks what drips between my lips
To waves that dance around your ear
And miscommunicates
All the words I meant in love
For bitter hearts with sharpened tongue.



THE SLEEPING SWALLOW:

Oh quiet bird,
How you coo in your deepest of sleeps.
As your breath suctions kisses upon my blushed red cheek.
And you lay in the nest of my hair,
Wound in the strong steady arms of your song,
That you sing within your dreams.

Dirk Velvet- A Poem

Gone  Fishing

i remember
looking at the worms
lying in the
cool
moist
soil

even though
they weren't
below my feet
below the grass
they seemed
at home
in the white
styrofoam
cup

nothing was
really
out of place
until i sent
the steel barbed hook i held
through them

the movement of a worm
on a hook
should make you
sleepless
forever

i then cast
death
into the
black water

and waited for my
red and white
bobber

to bring me
more

********************************

Re)verb magazine

&

Silver Birch Press

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