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-1-She’s caked in desert mud and dust but smiles - polite, despite the drying tears. She’s wearing the shirt her father wore in the last war - in her pocket the outline of his Bible. Her hair is dry but fair; a little like the weather. A chain gang unravels, stooping under foreign blades and the shackled safety of surrender. With staring-blind eyes they stumble and weave through the haze, while the sunburnt soldier pushes and shoves, and shouts at ears already full of conflict. This desert is empty with smoke. Marlboro, Bensons or No 1s. - take your pick. All de-pendent, of course, on the source - the Battery clerk with less clerking here to be done, in mud-dust heaven, than sitting, scratching, attaching paper clips to slips of paper, later to be dancing drunk among the gathered dregs of a Rhineland sweat-pot. In the festering dusk between fever and chill, where fear and boredom breed like stag-nating infection, and drunken flies stick to the thick stinking wool which wraps around the clammy poisonous plastic bottle of what, when translated from the Arabic, passes as water; we drink, and we live.

-2-

It’s just a wild dog dying - louder than my heart - that scream which chills the humid dark-ness of this dread night . This night steals my privileged sight, its spies deny me balance and vision and rest, and fail to warn me - for now this Silent Night is wracked with blasts from God’s own arsenal, erupting into colours sharp as knives. Sometimes the thunder is louder than the guns, someone said, in the deafening dark-light, while the airwaves whispered - someone’s dead. No place to cry in this night of confusion and I try to ignore it - eyes tight like a child, clenched and coiled - and drenched with cold aching sweat, and the relief which comes with dawn. Through the haze and the blinding cacophony, they run at me, baying silently. With eyes

poetr

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Here is a selection with a wide variety of themes and forms, ranging from sonnets

to prose, and from the everyday life to the causes of our days.

“”

DIARY OF A PLASTIC SOLDIER (EXTRACTS)

by Pip Thornton

3

POETRYclenched and fingers expectant, I convulse at their every charge.

-3-

Strike a pose, Tommy, strike a pose atop your truck, with its defaced desert rats and Rangers in the windscreen dust. Show Glasgow how it’s done - their son will do them proud and prove his worth in this - this tactless task - this faceless farce we played in. A promise - a pact, a friend for life (for now), it seems, at least. With bare-bone candour and the fresh-faced thrill of a first-blood war, he took his shots from over my shoulder.

-4-We went to war pro patria mori,45 minutes of death or glory,same Old Lie - new front page story.Sent to war on a whim and a prayer,we went to war and we’re still there. She lived for a while in a world where the ground would shift with the wind, with no pillow, no bed, and no walls, to either smother or shield her, cover or keep her. Neither safe nor suffo-cated, she lived on a plateau in between, and dreamed of tomorrow. She lives now framed by bricks which the wind can’t shift, in a parallel paralysis of pity and of pride, faint praise and whispers tainting duty with doubt. They never read the book she wrote in her world without walls. Dance with me, it said, or damn me - don’t condemn me with a smile.

In fetters they put us but we’re to blameWith their voodoo numbers we let them beWe gave them the dice and rules to the gameTrusting their claim to just hold tight and seeWith our reigns in their paws they pulled on hardWhile left and right fought old wars unawareThey gamble our homes; our tax and back yardAnd yet like cows and sheep we stand and stareWe elected cowards who sold us cheapPointless partisan ruled their rhetoricIn our name they robbed us but now we weep?Where were their policies economic? Rewarding failure with bonuses more Once more indifferent; once more we ignore

A BANKING SONNETby Luan-Don Dang

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POETRY

The white wine suits her pallor, she does not seemTo hold it, just to have snagged itOn her fingers. She stands like a handstandStands, upheld with vacancy, a dustsheet.

She is rotting, every night I see her, here amongThe comfortable men. Men like her father,Who brings her here as an epaulette, a bayonetOn an electric rifle, her decoration decomposes.

The rotting I see is static; here face is stuck on a movementbetween disinterest and grace, stuck like a teacherCaught her at it. The rot’s not something describable,Nor is it as simple as her untouched self:

I’ve seen unfucked women before.

She knows the wrapping of her clothes covers neitherFlesh nor beauty, and hovering at her father’s shoulderIt’s nothing to do with a daughter’s duty. She is hereWhere men are too old to live and she much too young

To understand her role. Her grip uponThe bar I work behind has turned her fingers white.And as My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen turn to descend the stairsShe sways atop her heels and screams within her eyes.

‘I HAVE HEARD OF YOUR PAINTINGS, TOO’

by Patrick Davidson

Through swinging dead - we dodge,and trade our frosted breathfor laughter – rounding corners,dripping red on white, andscrubbed like never desecratedstone – our ears pumping, runningNorth, then East – then slowing,fast colliding in our carcass dancewith blood-spat boots on gut-lined roadsand down Snow Hill to Farringdon.

SMITHFIELDby Pip Thornton

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POETRY

Girl’s spent all afternoon canvassing on the Strand, green logo-shirt and fur puff of a faux hat & mittens. Smiles, millions of them, thrust at you, you, you so many smiles they pile up on the pavement, the old ones gone all soggy beneath the new.

Girl’s spent all afternoon (sun’s gone) trying to canvass, but the passers don’t buy whatever it is she must, must sell. Back two hours later and she’s swimming in discarded smiles; I’m not sure a single pair of feet has really looked her way.

Why is it allowed on earth that such smiles, every last parcelled and ar-ticulated one, should be refused?

She turns around.Oh.

Green-logo-shirt-puff-smile girl has a lazy eyelid, like a wounded teddy bear. Recognise it when you see it: this is a small tragedy.

And yet, for all this (not a single one, no not a single one of us has even, not even you reading not even me writing even pretended to care), more smiles?Not unlike a wounded teddy bear, girl has a stitched mouth that can’t frown at the people who don’t stop for her.

I write where she can’t weep.

“CHUGGER” ( I WISH YOU WERE IN MY SHOES)

by Felix Franck

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POETRY

ROOD DREAMING MODERN VERSE TRANSLATION

by Alexander Athienitis

It is a long time since,but I will recall being rippedfrom the forest’s fringe for tearing my roots from terra firma lacerated my larynx.

Formidable fiends manhandled meand showed me as some spectacleordering me to raise wrongdoers. My enemies orchestrated this often – men bearing me on their backsuntil placing me at a peak.

Once I witnessed the Maker of Mankindhurtling with great honour wishing to mount me;when he did I dared not burst my branches, nor bendagainst the Lord’s word. The earth

shook suddenly, and I could have fallen and felled his foes,but I stood stiff. Then the brave buck stripped himself,was strong and stern of conscience, the Lord Almighty.So, he clambered up my timber frame right to the topand rose in esteem in the eyes of everyone – this was his attempt at absolution for all.

I shivered when he first tenderly entwinedwith me. Yet I stopped myself from sinkingto the ground, from falling and folding my leaves to the floor,and I stood strong. They raised me as a rood-tree, raisedme for the Mighty Maker, the Lord of Life Everlasting,I felt beckoned not to bend. Dark nails were driven

through me, I am left with visible vicious woundsand scars, but I hastened away from hurting them.They befouled us both together. So I was left drenchedwith blood bled from his side as his spirit soared.

I persisted despite many horrible happenings on that hill. I saw the Saviour callously spread-eagled.Black clouds converged and cloaked his body,its burning brilliance. The dark shadow spilled outand shrouded all humanity who wept for the Creation King.Christ was crucified. Still pious people came on pilgrimage

to pay homage to the Heaven Maker. I saw it all.I was painfully pierced with sores, so I bent

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POETRYto human hands with humility and honour. The tormentors clutched Christ there, the Lord Almighty,and heaved him down from that heavy harm.The soldiers left me spattered with sweat and blood

and tears, I was all shot-through with spikes.He, the limb-weary one, was laid downby them, and they took their place at the topby his head. They looked at the Lordfor he rested there a long while tired out from his time with me the cursed cross.

I see the grass grows heavyWith the ghosts of feet long gone,And slivers of sleet settleInto the steps, claiming them as their own. Sigh, the wind blows downAnd litters the land with leaves,A winter bed of dead fallFor wandering souls and thieves. My arms grow too weakTo bear the burden of the skies,My sight the wind withersAnd floods with a night full of lies: Oh I see feet and feathersAs the plunging pigeons pass byThe seeded hearts of children,The benched hearts of those to die. There is singular laughterThat breaks me from my reverie,But it’s only the poltergeist windPlaying prank on some pensive beech tree.

Ah the nights glow lushWith sturdy secondhand snows,Swings and see-saws lie silentAs children cry and the night bird crows. Ah what have you doneTo the sprightly midsummer breeze,To laughing slides of sunlightTo chasing smiles and calloused knees? Oh Winter, you cold-heart,You scheming scion of sunless things!Give me back my youthful sheen,Return the crying their smiles and swings!

THE PLAYGROUND OAK’S WINTER

RHYMEby Abhilaksh Lalwani

Last night I dreamt of you; not as you were, not as we were, but as my subconscious mind somehow imagines that we are now, with the barriers of distance and silence re-moved. Our lives were as they are; I, the woman I am now, and not the girl I was when you once knew me, and you, the same as ever: a girl’s name associated with, but never attached to, you. At first, I was taken aback at your presence: no, not at your presence, but at your demeanor. Your eyes glimmered and your lips gently pulled into a sheepish smile. This was the man I fell in love with, not the one I loved. And you in your joy prattled on about the girl who filled my vacancy, her sweet schoolgirl freckles, her fiery red hair, and a mind worthy of your own. And I looked on wistfully as you described your own fumbled attempts to take her by the hand; for, in order for one to be flustered, one must feel, and in order to feel, another must elicit some feeling. Yet when your blue eyes met mine, I could not but smile, and run to em-brace you; and holding me in your strong arms, you spoke of your newfound content-edness. My heart spilled over with love. ********************** The arms in which I awoke did not belong to you; rather, they belonged to a man who had perceived some silent emotion in the shift of my exhalations, and had pulled me into his arms. Darkness provided the cloak she is so famous for offering secret-laden lovers, preventing my tearful gaze from meeting his innocent one. Upon waking, I discovered that what had so hurt me about your nightly visit of my subconscious. It was not your presence, your anachronistic past haunting my contented present; it was not your praise of the girl who had come to replace me, or the beauty you found in her eyes. It was not even the fact that she had succeeded in bringing you happiness where I could not. What hurt me most was that I had forgotten the true color of your eyes.

“Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality, And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts…” –Lord Byron, “The Dream”

THE DREAMby Mary Alcaro

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POETRY