Journal
_

 

Wordlovers Weekly
featuring
Marion Greene, Neil Hawkes, Noel Fuller,
Pavel Chichikov, Marc Sherland, Peter Gallaher,
Terry Bowden, Arthur Isaacson

Volume I:vi. 8 March, 2004

Editor's Favourite
February 2004


 

Lament for Ireland

 

An inflection in the phlegm of nations   

has boarded a cross from collier to Dublin,

the mysterious rolling overcoat oversees

an infection of mounting desire, born

to coast across the mist so sullen  

and call in the Irish collar of fire.

Dangers are strangers of friction: let

enmities learn, our land's not for hire

to aid a bitter back street; slippery

tongued truths ex-portent from liars

throw anchor picks to anger the earth

of all the shires that spawned my sires.

 

Terry Bowden

copyright 2004

     

     

    two sonnets: Marc Sherland  

Riddance

 

I sometimes think you treat my love as trash,

Heart bleeds subject of such constant abuse,

You meet each sweet request as cheap refuse,

And in the basket of entreaties dash.

Excuses tumble, usually rubbish,

I do not know why precious time I waste,

Crumple hapless hope, crush with quickest haste,

Pour left over compliments on my dish.

Even poetry for your perusal,

Is tossed like leaves of wrinkled salad clump,

Your mind closed to prayer's vain proposal,

Into the vacuum of this dustbin dump,

I ask you to commit but get refusal,

Why did I put my love at your disposal?

 

Smarty's Birthday

 

My brother is unlearning all the things

Happens he strove to learn and once excelled,

In wicked humour nearly got expelled,

Loved girls pink romance, his praise gave them wings.

He has forgotten crawling, does not walk,

Forgets to raise his hand to coughing fits,

Vague about yesterday, recurs in bits,

Fine-wine words slurs and does not race to talk.

He used to sling his satchel look for mum,

Bound up the stairs in multiples of two,

To tell the world all that his day had done,

Each time his yarns and stories simply grew.

Now in his wheel-chair slumps and grumps, is glum,

Behind, dim eyes, burns furnace of bright sun.

March 2004

 Picking Lemons

Take care when choosing a lemon still growing.

Ask yourself those questions

That will lead to a perfect moment.

Is the yellow full of the smell and taste of the sun?

When you hold the fruit does it yield just enough

To tell you that this is the one?

Does it relinquish its connection to the tree

With sufficient ease to sigh that

Now is the time?

You make your choice and once taken,

Give thanks.

There is no going back.

 

Marion Greene

November 2003


The branches' length depends on the trees' roots, and right speech on the man's sense.

- Ibn Gabirol, "Poems"

 

Febr'y Mudly

 

Weather in Febr'y leaves much to desire

Hot so humid little ladies perspire

Whatever won't wash when wetta winds whorl

Mires mish-mash, messy mudly mudles moile

 

    © Noel Fuller, March 2, 2004


 

 

 

 

 

In me my future

 

A string of pearls strung on a silver thread

An end outside time; an end in the head

Each pearl in turn acts on what I've become

It draws me to it; with it become one

By colour, by note, by word, each sphere blend

All influence at each point the worlds to mend

 

 © Noel Fuller, February 28, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

Threads of Life

 

 

 

The fabric of my life, an irregular weave

of disparate threads not preconceived.

Included by chance yet right for their time

or a grand scheme enacted if I choose to believe.

 

A raiment constructed to cloak paradigm

or chance meeting forces unplanned and benign.

Is the path known or a new trail I tread?

What ever the answer, no chance to decline

 

 

Am I the weaver without his own thread?

Delivered by shuttle from the wheel in HIS head,

or am I the needle pulling the line,

in the hands of another, a tool being led.

 

If all is mere chance the end still unknown

then my fabric is record of those I have known.

 

©2004Isaacson

 

 

 

A Walk Around Manukau

 

 

 

Stepping forward in this world but back in another,

Takes me farther from home, yet closer to mother.

Drinking the nectar of life going on: Sweeping

Me back to comprehend others.

 

`Round to the end of my journey's beginning

arriving to find it is gone, I'm admitting

I'm less and I'm more, more questions than answers.

Less logic more faith, perhaps that is fitting

 

I cannot return to the place I began, deterred

from old views, new vistas conferred.

I am what I am, though not what I thought.

Learned from the ancestors my walking inferred

 

Truth to be told I'm just more aware

The sum of it all, an internalized prayer

 

©2004Isaacson


 

 

Migrations

 

Wild geese are flying overhead unseen

Just as the dead who leave their bodies lying

Who are the souls of radiance migrating

In lines by wings bear up their winter sins

 

Crossroad of meridians their goal

Beneath a star that never loses place

Where summer is the solar of Christ's face -

Their aim - beloved and ever-destined pole

 

Now like the souls the spring-migrating geese

Call above the houses, rough in clarity,

Their soundings clear in unison's disparity -

Far overhead and far until their voices cease

 

Let those who wish pray mercy for the dead

But still remember wild geese overhead

 

 

                 March 2, 2004

 

Spring Pond

 

 

How odd, how strange

The spring frogs

Are the northern bellbirds

 

Their cries above

The spring pond ringing

Sound like bells

 

Bells invisible

And yet they ring

And yet they ring

 

The silver sight

The sound in flight

Unseen delight

 

Here and there

The bells appear

No telling where

 

Ancient bells

Of northern spring

The spring pond ringing

 

 

                   March 7, 2004

 


Pavel Chichikov's Spring


 

Flat House

 

 

A doorway on its side: unsinned amens

Peeping mirrors, many voices sing:

Never need for Lent, we have not fallen,

We are the shrill inhabitants of spring

 

Breathing through our skins, our bulging eyes,

Slimy legs that formerly were fins,

Ceiling ever lower till it dries,

World enough because we have no sins

 

Merry house we have, a loud uproar

Where only metamorphosis is new

Water walls and shapeless is the door

And all the footloose clouds come walking through

 

  

   March 6, 2004

 

 

 

 



 

 

The Heron

 

 

I see the heron sentinel gray

Great eye fixed on me at close of day;

His black and steady eye on me.

 

 

Sleek his head, long his neck and sinuous,

So still, still as time, he stands and waits

Regarding me at close of day.

 

In growing shadow red flames his eye

Against dying light in Western sky,

And black his steady gaze at me.

 

Then off from settling shore he seeks.

See, up on mighty wings he beats

Looking back at me at close of day.

 

Straight East toward densest black he flies.

Ever east beyond the flowing skies

The heron that had gazed at me

 

Until on shores of night's dark lake

So still, still as time, he stands and waits

To pierce the sun and bring light back to me.

 

 

 

Peter Gallaher

March 2, 2004

 

Surrender

 

 

The Persian poets write lovers verse

To their country when she is swept away

In the rough arms of the invaders.

A flood tide of accusatory couplets pursues the victors

As they chase after chimeras of evil

In the desert.

They cannot care for the broken lives in their dust.

 

 

The abandoned lovers languish on their beds

Clasping their damaged spirits,

Dreaming of promises unfulfilled.

The poets read Rumi,

Tears falling without end,

Anointing the pages with grief.

 

 

Libraries blindly give up their treasure

To the cruel opportunists of war.

The sand between the great rivers

Buries another civilisation

With mean indifference.

 

 

 

Marion Greene

November 2003

 

 

Forged

 

 

 

 

    Furthest and closest

    Strange

    But not a stranger

     

    Point of perspective on an inward horizon

    One single datum in a sea of relativity

    A bell still ringing after chime

     

    The hand

    Of the founder

    Remains in the foundry

     

    And all about

    The thunder of hammers

    And the glowing metal singing

     

    I am that hand forging

    I am that steel moving

    I am that which is still to be

 

Forged words

Mere forgery

 

Words are water

Action is iron

Neil Hawkes

 

 



Poets A-F

Poets G-L
Poets M-R

 Poets S-Z

JOURNAL BACK NUMBERS

22 January, 2004
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5 February, 2004

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19 February 2004

27 February, 2004