 |
Stanza Supplement: LPS Members' Poems, March 2006
Contributors:
Alice Beer, Ken Berry, David Bircumshaw, Mike Brewer, Caroline Cook, Pat Corina, Jill Cunningham, Sally Festing, Brian Fewster, Lydia Finlay, James Harbour, Jean Harbour, Norman Harrington, Maimie Henderson, Anne Kind, Mark Mawson, D.A. Prince, Marilyn Ricci, Katherine Samuelson, Stuart Snowden, Huw Watkins
Foreword
Stanza Supplement is a small collection of poems by and for current members of Leicester Poetry Society. Most of these poems have not been published. This in no way detracts from their worth. Many members write purely for their own pleasure and satisfaction. L.P.S. has many good writers whose work remains unpublished for various reasons.
I hope you enjoy reading this "taster" of the work of fellow members, and that you find it illuminating. I hope it will support your own interest in writing and/or reading poetry. It may also encourage you to come to the Friday workshops to which you can bring your own poems or listen to those of other members.
Caroline Cook
Mike Brewer
Affirmation
A, you are effortlessly the first,
Standing secure and symmetrical,
Legs linked, to stop doing the splits,
No curves to give rise to ambiguity:
You are a letter to inspire confidence.
Y, with only one leg to stand on,
You have a highly developed sense of balance,
And therefore of justice.
Your ever-open arms shout their welcome:
You are a letter to be trusted and loved.
E, you are the most numerous and influential,
Your horizontal trident, at the end of a word,
Enables all vowels, including yourself,
To sound like themselves, instead of being soft:
You are a letter of great power.
A, Y and E, oh noble letters!
Separately, you have no betters.
Together? Amazing! Well I never!
"AYE" means "A lways"
"Y es"
and "E ver".
Norman Harrington
Brixham Harbour
Tiers of eyes set in pastel colour-wash;
Stalls, circle, upper-circle, gods,
watch the jinking spot-lit harbour.
Small craft 'stay' like trained puppies on a lead;
a jig-saw of a scene.
The retain front sucks visitors in;
tastes and chews and spews them out.
Seagulls veer off with shrieks of laughter.
Inns, cafés and shops encore themselves
excitedly in shimmering ripples.
The under-study of the Golden Hind
rests in the wings festooned in colours;
a birthday card of a picture.
Fishermen speak of Spanish fishing thieves
in vivid coloured language.
An artist depicts a rust-racked hulk
giving up its hard won sea harvest;
a cliché of a painting.
Clichés continue to earn their keep.
D.A. Prince
Gull
You cannot look away. You cannot tear your eyes
from muscular percussion, from the hammering
down down down of his bill. You might take in
those webbed pink feet anchoring his weight,
that back of gleaming steel, his broad chest
feathered salt-white, how he works from the neck.
You might recall this, afterwards.
But now precision: the piercing smash
of crab shell on stone, the splay of claws;
how each blow splinters more, more tough casing,
how he concentrates to scatter
all the life out, to shatter useless armour.
You hope the children look away — they might
be seeing this, storing it up for nightmares
like television news. You hope he's not their gull
who swooped for fish and chips, whose ka-ka-calling
woke you at six to watch black fishing boats
slide down grey shingle into the sun's eye.
Now it's too late not to know how killing feels,
how each crash drives this yellow bill deeper,
pounding pounding pounding. Later,
you might remember the estuary mud, its slow plopping,
the mesh and flow of seeping rivulets; a backdrop
familiar as summer. But you won't forget his beak's scarlet spot
in, out, in, out, drawing you down
or how you recognise his single-minded
greedy will to kill.
Pub. Magma 30, Winter 2004
Katherine Samuelson
Hokusai Men
Hokusai craft, land-loving men
disarm the sea, lie back against
her towering anger
raging breast —
present no angle, plane or force
to challenge
natural furies' course.
Mole
Mole mountains range ...
his subterranean tracks
twist, tack,
reveal no goal but being,
his own slow motors
run until decay.
I touch his Braille land
with cerebral feet,
half-understand
the innocent survival
where no bridge is crossed
until the sensitive nose
and fixed rock
meet.
Ken Berry
Klein Blue for Yves Klein
Death's not — is not — the end, my friend
the mystical is on the mend,
the numinescent declaration
underpins his figuration.
The nave, the ship, the golden temple
and weightlessness of transcendental
the format of the works of Klein —
divinity in flatter time.
Pink, gold and blue — here shines his face —
... the earth is blue from outer space ...
Blue Globe, Fire Wall and vernissage
Ex Voto for the modern age.
An image made with living brush
for death has caught us in the rush —
the puissant nature of the bone,
blue voids may be our rightful home
for patent blue is his by right —
the blue of sorrow, blue of night
a paean to a mystic blue —
infinity that is Klein Blue.
Anne Kind
In Case She Was Wrong
I have a memory of hands
Like Dürer's painting
Of Mother's hands
Holding mine in prayer.
"God bless Daddy, Baby, me
All good people in the world".
I'm not sure she believed
Guessed at her doubt.
When her life ended
Without a sound
At the pressing of a switch
She slid quietly out.
I fold my hands
In memory of her
In case she was wrong.
Pat Corina
Things my mother taught me
How to chop mint, holding the blade
From above, with rapid vertical strokes. Sugar
eases the task, loosens the locked-in oils
till suddenly those dry, ribbed, grey-green leaves
turn aromatic emerald-black.
How to mix pallid Birds' with water to reveal
an unsuspected amber, like
a conjuror's trick - though how
that sluggish liquid turned to creamy sauce
was a feat she practised
in her secret cave.
How to shell peas, so that even now
pressing my thumb to a curved pod's end
transports me to that room
where I'm kneeling on a wooden chair,
acolyte to her mysteries.
Topping and tailing. Creaming
sugar and marg. Peeling, slicing.
Putting cutlery in its proper place.
How to stay silent. Smile. How to walk
on knives.
Jill Cunningham
Letter to Lucien Freud
Here I am having just heard you in Night Waves
saying how you would like your sitters to be:
that they should 'be themselves' rather than
as models posing.
Well I am being myself when I write to remind
you, (not this time to ask the question which
you did not respond to some years ago) that
we did meet in Bangor during the war.
Someone else who was there as an adult, whereas I
was only a child, has confirmed my vague memory
and also remembers that you left some paintings
with us in store.
I write all this just for your enlightenment
as I'm sure it is of the utmost importance
to your well-being.
my first and only Spanish poem
piel contra madera skin to wood
es bueno is very good
pero piel contra piel but skin to skin
es estupendo! is better still!
Huw Watkins
The Sharpening
The blade whizzes
up and down so fast
the moments blur
and as the sun
catches, light
flies round the walls
so crazily
the eye
cannot keep up
Even the cat,
watching,
sits bemused
Trying not to ...
he runs a finger
towards the edge
and cuts
a first slice
so thin
the light
shines through it
like hullo
James Harbour
Dogwatch
The old man I met
sat on a bench.
His face was the kind
a boy could ask the time.
The sun would glint
on his fob, and he'd say,
"half past four", as I ate
my sherbet, or ha'penny chew.
His dog was black and mild.
"Does he bite?" I'd worry.
"Naw! You can stroke him son".
And I'd pat him and run off home.
Today I sat on a bench
and a boy asked me the time.
As I turned my wrist,
it was twenty past four.
"Does she bite?", he asked
as he stroked my dog;
finished his crisps
and ran off home. Leaving me
with, the space between
twenty past and half past four.
Jean Harbour
A visit to the National Marine Aquarium
Sleek fish in a shoal
dart purposefully
then stop
held by water
in perfect adaptation.
A lone flat fish
flurries down
and with a belly shuffle
turns sand to mist
then disappears.
Two half spheres ogle,
cartoon lips gape
on a slant,
like sculptures in the sand.
A small boy sprawls noisily,
nose splayed against the glass,
mimicking the fish,
his vigil eyes alert for father.
For Anna
A sulky wind, heavy
with damp snow
teases the first snowdrops.
They flatten in the cold
but perk again
to show the strength
that pierced the hardened earth.
In a different white space
another strength,
another newness.
No puny snowdrop here,
a wiry handful
of thrashing arms and legs
and the shrill of birth.
Brian Fewster
Granita 2
When Tony Blair dined with the Devil,
they chose the discreetest of dives:
soft candles aglow on a table
that gleamed with long spoons and long knives.
The Devil produced a prospectus,
with bullets and arrows and more,
about the political value
of an artfully engineered war.
"I'll make my luck your luck," he promised.
"Your enemies time after time
will see you escape from their clutches
and swell on the proceeds of crime.
"The leaders of public opinion
will dance to threads dark and discreet,
and as opiate for the electors
I'll keep your economy sweet.
"I can play the sins piano and forte –
press down on the pedals of growth
with gluttony, avarice, envy,
while taking it easy on sloth.
"Now to formalise our understanding,"
he said with a sinister leer,
"I’ll just make a painless incision
and ask for your signature here."
"Er, look, Nick…" smiled Tony with feeling,
as he carefully weighed his reply,
"you're a gentleman down to your trotters
and I'm known as a pretty straight guy.
"These trappings are so mediaeval!
We're friends and the deal's understood.
There's no call for bodily fluids
or parchments encrusted with blood."
So they settled it just with a handshake,
but Nick turned away filled with gloom
as he closed his executive briefcase
and wondered who'd outsmarted whom.
Sally Festing
To the Lord God of Movement
I. Black and gold trainers,
I'm globe-hopping, I'm wrapped in stars. Tuck in the song
that ululates through generations. Note-book, novel,
I am myself.
II. Hi Jessica, it's Anna. I'm in the Departure Lounge.
Ex-Vasar executive taps her heel.
Close my eyes, allow the world to glaze.
Hi George, it's Anna.
In Economy, one is herded.
Close eyes, hear the bleat of Rutland's lambs.
Hello Lorna, Hi...
In an emergency, pull only one of the red tabs.
It is important that you do not inflate your vest until...
First house martin yesterday over the garden;
its flight my celebration.
III. Mountain goat, I make for my lodging.
Smells of spices, garbage,
Hispanic comers, Arab shops.
Black and gold trainers pitter-pat
on grey stone flags below brown stone houses.
My granddaughters wore trappings from Sri Lanka,
gold on their hair, their throats, arms, foreheads.
Glamour as large as a bride in her bath
is what they crave.
And thinking of the tight warm hugs,
the pale brown skin,
Suddenly I start to sing.
2 IV Grand Central Park, a boating lake;
elder sister dreams.
Water is her servant,
swamps her world, her mind.
Prince Charming kisses the Barbie doll,
Darling I am yours.
Sleek as a seal with apple breasts,
she swoons.
Splashing, a boat rows past
cracking the water's sky.
Sister drifts like a pink pink cloud.
Long days in July.
V. Where 5th Avenue intersects Central Park South
piped music flares to a raz of tulips,
stink of horse piss, tourist carriages,
kids on scooters, roller skaters.
Golden woman bears a feather for some General.
A crone with a coke can sucks misery and elation.
Up her straw roar public sculpture, roller seaters, scooters, traps
for tourists, odours, petals.
Rises the moment;
vanishes
in leaf-filtered sun.
VI. Rain through waves of Brooklyn leaves,
picnic tables sad and rained on.
I lie in my 80 dollar a nighter
reading Jackie Kay.
I think of the girls' long weedy hair
within this same embrace,
same rattle and race of water
shed on a shuttle of spread umbrellas;
making the same refrain.
I'll lift them in my arms.
Today's today; it cannot come again.
3 VII. Could I have dreamed the trip?
Dreamed morning tea at five.
That I skipped through tall brown lamp-lit streets
alive
to the perfect naked bodies of next year's women
in last night's bath.
It is something to which
however hard I try,
I can never get close enough.
fly past the Hudson's mouth —
It seems enormously wide —
Fly home, deep grass.
Maimie Henderson
Over the Road to Paradise
The generous guest has gone;
the rush to Paradise is on.
We have no need to window-gaze;
we know by heart the unchanging places of the jars,
Gob stoppers, liqurice sticks, sherbet dabs, cinnamon balls.
We push the door whose two-note bell rings customner.
For a second I am halted by the foreign, sweet, tobacco smell.
Everything is in its proper place.
On the counter wooden tray with dusty loaves,
fly papers dangling from the ceiling,
brush heads, firelighters, castles of tobacco tins
stacks of packs of cigarettes.
The old man shuffles in,
Grey-faced, his specs have matching metal rims,
baggy suit, crumpled shirt, clay pipe dancing on his lips.
He sighs, lifts up his scales. We clamour.
"How much?" "How many for a penny?"
He has forgotten how to smile.
I choose a mix of acid drops and rosebuds
and suck and suck until my tongue is sore
and teeth on edge.
Poetic Licence
She was sweet Sestina,
An Oxy-moron he.
One day he chanced to Metre
Come, I will set you Free.
He took her in the morning,
The grass was white with Rhyme,
Launched her into Sextet.
Knew how to shoot a Line.
It was this I Metaphor.
She is a smashing Lay.
I am but a girl, she cried,
Let us get wed today.
They make a pretty Couplet,
Said the local Clerihew
Joined them at the altar,
The wedding guests were few.
One day he stole some Triolets
From a seller on the road.
To praise her pinched a Paeony
Couldn't pay for what he Ode.
Don't tangle with the law, she wept,
You are no Villanelle.
I can think of nothing Verse
Than rotting in a cell.
They made an Epic journey
They fled to Limerick.
That was where her Grammar lived
She'd keep him out the nick.
And there they lived for many a year.
From crime he Stanza side.
Their Mood was calm and quiet
Until the day they died.
Marilyn Ricci
'I have a golden mother'
'I have a golden mother,' she says,
cold, hard, scratches easily.
Queen Midas of Arnley Crescent,
polishing the windows
until they dare not shine'.
To spite her, she glows grey,
moulds her putty-coloured body into
frames.
This keeps out the rain
until she
shrivels,
cracks.
Lydia Finlay
Twenty minutes in Winter
Dayfall again was dropping, burdenless.
From blue nil
a jet-trail sprang and spilled
rose-neon.
Formless things, hours blackenfold,
grew lumpen --
buildings, land, the bristled wood,
dim quilted road with frozen vehicles aligned,
the orchard matt against matt sky,
and jumping crystals sprung from scrapen glass
as padded humans vigorously scratched at screens
green pressed the eastern trees.
Doors slumped, motors pulled and ran.
There was a pause
a body dressed, a kettle was put on
light skimmed the threshold
on mud spottled with snow clods.
Under shrubs a stirring mammal lifted dark fur to honeyed roots
up to the low lemon rays, the dripping green, and sky blue-whey.
Dayfall again, burdenless.
Alice Beer
Winter
High on the thin twigs
of tallest beech a blackbird
stark against grey sky.
-' -
Desperate for food
birds leave exquisite imprints
stencilled in the snow.
-' -
Small heap of feathers
next to the hedge Foxes go
hungry in the cold.
-' -
Spring, Summer, Autumn,
Winter...should I be prepared
to face ice and snow?
Caroline Cook
He sees yellow flowers suddenly
— the poet, when he’s blue,
so lone and low as a cloud
on hills, fells, ghylls and wandering Grasmere Vale,
and he can’t stop gazing at them.
They take him sky-high. Flying
is thrilling — in sheer April it is! Windermere
shivers in little winds lifting their skirts,
tickling the tarns, rustling the trumpets, blowing them.
Such multitudes of rash paperiness!
“Spring!” he cries,
dives down dales dovewards,
yells,
“Dorotheeeeee!”
David Bircumshaw
Unfinished Work
It was an evening of small and unremarkable murders.
On Sherlockstrasse, as torn mapflakes imitated snow,
One observed the froidsang of closed detectives, doors.
I would write to you in poetry for the salvation of prose.
Would write in salivation as the quatrains threaten, close.
*
Consider this, old curiosity: a backstreet shop, stop, pawn.
Message not received. 1950, roughly, hangs in the air,
And distant the Empire hoots in the estuary. Fog coughs
Appreciatively, like a connoisseur, Anthony StJohn Aloysius
Has made it last. Such art on your walls, my dears, such
Feeling in the brushwork, such poise.
*
It was simply hate, love, anger, fear. And the idea of beer.
Most of the dead survived. It was we witnesses we feared.
*
A man in my head shouts on street corners. Obliquities
Brush against clothing in the distances of crowds. Slow mists
Curl from winter breaths, smokespeak bars, waitside quays.
My Bombed Pronouns, the sirens still are sounding
In secure wards, behind touch coded doors.
Mark Mawson
At the Desert Museum, Tucson
By mid-morning
the heat was already
building. Cactus Wrens
sat on totem poles,
Brown-crested Flycatchers
proclaimed their heavy-billed
whit. Gila Woodpeckers
poked at saguaro blooms.
We met a group of Japanese
birders who turned in circles
below the forest fires
claiming the higher slopes.
I purchased a music tape and yellow
tee shirt. The assistant remarked upon
the way I wrote the date. Well, in England
it's eleven - nine, not nine - eleven.
We had lunch on the veranda.
Pyrrhuloxias collected
our crumbs. Cactus Wrens
were slumming with gossiping sparrows.
Outside, a winged processional...
of White-throated Swifts,
Costa's Hummingbirds,
Mourning Doves.
Stuart Snowden
The Birth of Light
From out of the Cosmos
The Divine Spark was hurled
On to the dry straw
Of a stable floor,
Setting fire
To the entire world;
So that those who dwelt
In the darkness
Of the pagan night
Were able
To see, and turn the key
To Liberation.
A little town
In the Middle-East
Became, all at one,
The centre of the Universe,
And, at that moment,
The moment of Birth,
The whole earth held its breath
For one, whose life and death
Would be,
The focal point, the turning point,
Of human history.
|
