Neon Highway ISSN: 1476-9867
Issue 16
Contents
Note from Jane Marsh: pages 3-6
Eunice Ogunkoya: pages 7-8
Sam Smith: page 9
Kim Goldberg: pages10-11
Richard Asworth: page 12 (Collage)
Janet Currie: page: page 13
Carlos Nogueiras: pages 14- 15
Fergus Dick: pages 16-17
Kate Edwards: pages 18-20
Geoffrey Loe: pages 21-22
Steve Spence: pages 23-24
Dave Sealey: page 25
Jordan McMahon: pages 26-27
Simon Leake: pages 27-28
Henry Blake: pages 28-30
Ivor C Treby: pages 31-33
Phil Knight: pages 34-35
Austin Mc Carron: pages 36-37
Publications: pages 38-39
Sunscription: page 40
Front Cover and page 12. Artwork by the artist, Richard Ashworth.
ashworth_richard_66@hotmail.com
Introduction
June 2009
Jane Marsh
(Some thoughts on plastic surgery and achieving perfection)
I feel lately, I am getting older. I no longer gain the attention I once received as a younger woman. You discover many programmes these days about women having surgery, makeovers, implants and botox and god knows what else.
However, I do think, unless you have a real physical ailment it is not worth it. I also think that faces and bodies are a little like creating paintings and poems. There is that neverending desire to keep going, to try and improve, to make it better, to disect and to edit, to build and rebuild.
The only trouble is, that you can’t really do that with your face so easily. Have you ever noticed how people always want a bit more done to themselves? Even after they have had an important aspect rebuilt, such as the nose for instance! They are still not satisfied. I have an explanation for this and I think it is one of the reasons why many people get hooked onto this ridiculous obsession. It’s what I call the ‘Frankensteining’ of oneself, the obsessional need to re-create, of taking control and re-building the body. If all goes wrong, of course, we are dissatisfied. Even if it is fine, we then become what I call ‘Phantom of the opera’. We hide away, can’t face ourselves, don’t want to go out, fall into self- hate which is something similar to what we had in the first place before we ‘frankensteined’ ourselves and therefore we are capable of becoming compulsive in our desire to change the way we look.
So why do I disagree with these changes? I feel it is how we are taught to look at ourselves and we need to get beyond this ‘frankensteining’ and instead look at the beauty within ourselves that exists already that needs to come out instead of being hidden or changed. Why cover a flower in spray paint if it is a beautiful flower already?
There are similarities to painting and poetry. For instance, if you put red into a painting it will need to be balanced out with other colours to make it the right amount and to give it the right harmony and composition in the overall painting and the same with words, if you add a word into a poem that seems harsh for instance or sounds odd to the ear, you may want to balance it out with other sounds to emphasise the language you are using. The great thing is of course that you do at least have the opportunity to change things, but this isn’t so easy with physical selves. So, when a person has their nose changed, for instance, they will be excited and may think that once the nose is changed, that they will look ‘prettier’ or ‘better’ in some way. But it is all relative. You could look prettier or worse depending on the rest of your face.
For instance, you have now had your operation. Although the nose is now what you always wanted, unfortuntaly it has now inadversedly changed the width of your cheekbones and has now set the face offbalance in a certain way as to distract from what were previously some of your better features, for instance the eyes or the mouth. So now, you may be thinking about or needing to have another job done to raise your eyes, to make them more slanted or something done to your mouth to compensate for your new nose.
I often want to say to celebrities. Leave yourself alone! What they seem to forget and miss out on, is that the features we all have are all in harmony with our other features so if you change something, then it will automatically make the other features change also, so you have to realise that your one change will affect everything as a whole, as a result of one simple aspect changing. It won’t just be the one feature that will change. I can understand of course that sometimes there is a feelgood factor to all of this and that sometimes it is necessary to change in order to benefit more confidence but only if necessary...please!
Also, another piece of advice. Don’t think that by having a feature from a famous person will necessarily make you look like that person or even change you greatly. I will give you an example. Imagine you are looking at a painting of the great Mona Lisa and you decide to give her a different nose, and you want her to have a cute little nose. Let’s try it. Let us give her Reese Witherspoon’s nose as below.
Example 1.
The question is, even if we like this better, what is the point? It looked okay in the first place and is this nose on this face really any better? She looks different but not amazing and basically this nose looks better on the face of Reese Witherspoon because it goes in harmony with the other features of Reese. Now imagine that it wasn’t Reese Witherspoon’s nose that you wanted and instead it was your idol, Kate Winslet’s nose and you think if you give Mona Lisa, Kate Winslet’s nose then everything will be amazing and she will forever look just like Kate Winslet. So lets give it a go.
Example 2.
Here is the face of the Mona Lisa with Kate Winslet’s nose.
As you can see it looks surprisingly identical to the original Mona Lisa nose. Therfore this just goes to prove that by using the nose of the person you feel most attached to, for instance, Kate Winslet, doesn’t necessarily mean that you will end up looking much different than you did in the first place.
I hope you have enjoyed Jane Marshe’s beauty therapy advice and learnt that you are also a unique masterpiece and like the Mona Lisa you should not be tampered with because as you can see we can go on forvever finding the right nose and never be satisfied, so why not keep it as it was originally? A beautiful nose in its own right as the Mona Lisa has proved over many
centuries.
All the very best.
Jane Marsh.
Eunice Ogunkoya
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
Whilst waiting for life to begin at forty
As her first-born child approaches adulthood
She imagines what it would be like
To be stuck at the age of sixteen
Not yet an adult
But no longer a child.
Being a caring mother
And at the big crossroad of life
She wonders whether he would rather be
Like Jack and the Beanstalk
Or like Peter Pan in Neverland
He's trying ever so hard
To fulfill all the hopes of achievement
Being expected of him
But yet he's got to make major decisions
About whether or not to strive
To join the race to lose virginity
To take up a human vice
To aim for an ASBO award.
And what about responsibilities?
Old enough for some
Too young for others
Who should decide?
Perhaps he should
He's ever so fearless
Unlike good old-cautious she.
She imagines how he must feel
What with all the peer pressure
And that from her
It must be ever so confusing
Being stuck in the middle
Especially with her in limbo too.
They both deserve some respite and rescue
From this precarious position
In the halfway house of hope
By means of the magnet of salvation
And the alarm clock,
To avoid being suck in a moment in time.
MIRROR, MIRAGE, MIRACLES
Reflecting light rays from a concrete plane
Of silvered glass
Disclosing desires and dislikes
With clear-cut images
This is the mirror that cancels mirk.
Reflecting light rays from a visual plane
Of heated air
Distorting delusions and distress
With glimpses of water
This is the mirage that causes mire.
Reflecting light rays from abstract planes
Of thoughtful minds
Discerning dreams and dispelling doubts
With true brillant outcomes
These are miracles that create mirth.
Sam Smith
Acceptance
The grief that bursts in a blasting out
shout of despair, whole of the torso
bone-racked and rocking;
and goes on
for one long, sore-eyed waking is, all told
probably the best cure for such loss.
A death greeted with instant numbness
that looks on, is composed, equally still....
And yet grief has snuck in, has become
a blister ready to be popped, lies
in wait for another loss, trivial maybe....
a broken toy?
a missed appointment?
and then the snot-spluttering howl,
bystanders looking to one another puzzled.
Lock-In
....hero herein heroin .... searching by means of mental mirrors for some mislaid idea — pearls are dried oyster spit? — such a self-appointed task can still be a binding act that does not allow time or mind-space for self-wonder .... in a shut-in life, unpeopled and uneventful, early evening comes up against the barrier, an awareness of yet unspent time, hectare after hectare of grey terrain to be crossed, and with the tired brain unable to offer any distraction, the only company this hollow muscular sac, the heart; and in the beckoning distance absence in sleep....
Crown of Thorns
Kim Goldberg
the sperm of
jesus christ is believed to be
a snail
a hermaphrodite
will swoop and dive in unison
by certain schools of devout christians
the snails sex life
as well as some atheists
is unbelievably complicated to start with
the evidence offered includes
they are hermaphrodites each possessing a vagina and
the virgin birth since high school biology
two penises
tells us this can only lead to
mating
two X chromosomes
can take up to twelve hours
the position is further supported by much
which is understandable
early medieval art depicting
the foreplay involves firing
jesus as a woman
solid (and often lethal)
complete with breasts suggesting
darts
the true reason they all came
into each others bodies
to behold
(Assembled from Worlds Within Worlds microbiology textbook
and blog postings about Jesus)
* * *
The Breaking of Waves
Crashed
as wave, as borderless boundarygone
toptorn wave Cast
out
from shorn
sea, from wonderless stupefied
uniform sea Left to
wander
the beach
the forsaken legless genreless
beach The
unstoppered
wave, taking
not shape not precision not scissors
to cloth The naked
wave
when fundamentals
fall away, when spent thought lies
splayed In tall
grass
vacant as
shotguns, vanished as brainstems
writ In wet sand
blashpemous
banished, clamped
as bass jaw, upswept as gulls, shunned
staked Unflocked
expatriated
becoming
the rolling wave, the locating wave, the unshapable
wave The
unbroken wave
* * *
Janet Currie
B
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L
L is protest poetry
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RISITJUSTWASTINGTIMEUNTILDEATHCALLSGUESSWH
Carlos Nogueiras
Childish Dreams
A phoney ceiling in the sky, like a sheet of greyness
To dampen her childish dreams of big city lights.
The men she slept with for money always wore cheap
Suits, travelling salesmen with ordinary families, car
Payments and mortgages to trouble their minds, men
Who often discovered something new and profoundly
Liberating buried between her thighs: A momentary
Escape from the rat race, a quick release from the
Tyranny of life, and she was making money, plenty of
Money, and saving it for a rainy day which glistened
In the distance on the edge of nowhere, like one
Of her clients, fully satisfied with her willingness
To please, yet muttering to himself obscene words
Pregnant with the mystery of a foreign tongue.
Maldito River
Her body sunk in the Maldito River,
Floating there peacefully unclaimed,
Enticing the bloodsuckers thirsty
For the scent of redness under
Warm inviting skin, a gang of black
Scabs clung to shivering flesh,
She would have to burn those off
Applying the healing power of
A match, a task assigned
To an angelic stranger who pulled
Her out of water, and thus
Voluntarily assumed the role of
Saviour by holding her down as
He plucked the evildoers off her
Body with his bare hands.
She squirmed and winced for
The pain was intense, then offered
Herself to him- who shook his
Head and mutely declined, walking
Away with a trace of regret
Painted in his dark vigilant eyes.
Fergus Dick
A3
There’s a hole the size of a bath tub in
The middle of the carriageway at the
Crossing of Cedars Road and Long Road.
Where on rushed winter mornings a cyclist
May jump the lights with desperation
In fear of imminent observation
By men from Offsted in cream silk cravats.
And Clapham Common snorts away to port
With distant dogs of no particular sort.
The trunk road exhibits this chasm
Leaving queuing white van men in spasm,
As they rev their utes in growing folly
Scared of missing Grandma Lerner’s lolly
She’ll spread the loot to other worthy guys
Who weren’t so startling blown by surprise
Who didn’t dip their 1990 chassis
Cold steel crunch in the crucial thoroughfare
London to Guildford via Wandsworth.
Fergus Dick
the Death of the Supermarket
When Tescoe and Sainsbury
are old-fashioned
when the bright young branch manager
looks back on the boom
from his retirement home in Henley
I hope he knows how many blows
to the chin and gut
of so many valuable things
he struck
with his re-arrangement of the store.
Kate Edwards
Deep Night Loving.
There was a time,
lying in deep grass
under a melting moon.
you, kissing my lips,
kissing my pale skin,
all set fair, love forever,
lying always each on each,
body on body, mind on mind,
such longing, such passion,
flesh seeking flesh,
sweat mixing with sweat,
bodies fitting, joining,
rising to a sudden ecstasy,
the collapse into satiety,
limbs tangled, enfeebled,
murmers of enduring love,
of everlasting desire.
Why did the night suddenly seem colder,
the moon glide, hiding behind a cloud?
A Small Adventure.
Out of the door,
along the lane
scented with shrubs,
white candles
lighting the chestnuts,
torches in the night.
I run through streets,
houses with tidy gardens,
moon-paled azaleas,
star-spiked magnolia.
I reach the track
to the wild wood,
I find a place to lie,
a soft and fern strewn hollow,
a deep earth smell.
Branches shelter above,
night air caressing me,
I lie back, watching
the revolving universe.
The moon is thin,
the stars are far apart,
lanterns in vacancy.
A heavy rustling
disturbs the dark
beyond my shelter,
startled I swiftly rise,
running back to the streets,
to lights, to safety.
It was
a small adventure
perfumed by the night.
----------------------------
‘Can’t we still be friends…’
This
after a short, disjointed conversation in which
you told me nothing after your first words,
‘I ‘m out of it.’
Out of this situation, you meant, out of this affair,
this erotic kinship
this body on body,
this mind on mind,
now revealed for the illusion it was. A quote
hazed in my head, ‘I have been so deceived.’
A week I had waited for you, dressed and perfumed,
each night watching the dusk fail, an indigo sky
robbing the trees of colour. Another drink,
a hand reaching for the phone, then retreating,
a book unread, thrown careless on the floor,
the scent of Rive Gauche on my skin
sickening me. Thinking every minute, every moment
I would hear your car, your footsteps.
Now this.
A broken voice on the line, almost sobbing.
‘Don’t pretend to be upset!’ I hissed, ‘it is you
who is ending it. All I want to know is why,
tell me why, I’ll ask no more, but tell me why.’
You couldn’t or wouldn’t. You left me empty,
no reasons, no excuses, no explanations, just
those foolish words repeated, ‘Can’t we still be friends.’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ I shouted, banging down the phone
and staring through a window at a world turned bleak,
turned grey and ordinary, the shining gone, gone
with the deep night longing, the searching, the joining,
mouth on mouth, part to part, compelling fusion.
I never did discover why you wanted this no longer.
Geoffrey Loe
WITH BUILT-IN RADIO
The prostitutes move inland on Christmas Day
to stalk solitary men like seagulls in
a boat’s wake. Their unfamiliar words
just aggravate until ‘darling’ restrains.
Where the dirt of boredom’s trodden on,
this square could be a prison yard, sky-high
with cameras. That man’s spun a yarn but looks
as though it’s canteen day. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’
Later, his mind will take him down the block,
investigate his ruin. While shopping
explodes in climax at the till, he should
have waited for the sales. He’d know nothing.
But won’t be content, if adverts arouse
him still. They leave you feeling you’re one short
of a six-pack, a sandwhich from a picnic.
He’s seen Bangkok to leer in Heathrow’s squall
and might say it’s just like wanking-robbing,
though, seems more honest as it quietly meets
the needs of kleptomaniacs and the poor,
who know the jingle: If the alarm sounds, run.
BLOWN AWAY
Shot, I staggered to one wall, another,
Eyes all disbelief, guts hanging out.
My pulse was racing to a finish.
I would die in a minute. I would die.
The world stopped spinning in the corner, but
I was a boxer on the referee’s shoulder:
Legs jelly, arms like lead; bricks blurred and then
My throat filled up with anger. Looking down
The puddled alley, the most beautiful
Girl I ever knew, said, ‘Sorry,’ Tottering
To her, I fell among the dustbins. Bitch.
My breath unsteady, clouds enclosed the moon.
Steve Spence
Slowed down, it’s a performance full of grace
As I watched her gazing out past the other boats
in the bay, I heard the pirate whisper in her ear.
“This week we’re going to look skywards & marvel
at the mystery of clouds”. His early works have
that tinge of melancholic wit, a comical mismatch
between the banal & the sublime, yet as the
economic slowdown starts to bite, are we seeing
a backlash against green policies? There was a
full moon the night I moved in & it literally filled
the room. When a butterfly leaves the safety of
its cocoon, does it realise how beautiful it has
become? Here, on the other side of the island,
the view is entirely different, yet the interior of the
ship is decorated in a similar pastiche baroque style.
It has been suggested that strobe lighting is an
optional extra.
Every time a flare rose up towards the sky,
the figure of a pirate stood out plainly against the
dark background. There is a great variety of fauna
on the island, including several comparatively
rare species. This week we’re going to look skywards
& marvel at the mystery of clouds. People in the
street can be incredibly aggressive but it’s easy to
lose the nuthatch’s song in the middle of a woodland
chorus. Alice was as interested in man-made clouds
as in the natural variety, yet choosing your aperture
or what you want in-focus, helps define your role as
a photographer. She hesitated & the stranger caught
her by the throat again. As waves swept the decks &
guns broke adrift, they made their way towards the
jutting spit of land at the tip of the crescent of sand.
Strobe lighting is an optional extra.
Last night I met draco, the pirate who modelled for
Salvador Dali. Soon I was surrounded by dancing
buccaneers, armed with pistols & cutlasses, yet
the terror of waking up in an alien world has never
been more eloquently expressed. Suddenly, there
was a loud bang in the parlour & I hurried in to behold
the captain lying full-length upon the floor. It was not
Alice who hesitated but the man whose authority had
brought her here. He was finicky & fastidious, with
a dandy’s taste in waistcoats. How she longed to get
out of that dark, sunless cabin & wander around
among those beds of bright flowers. Yet she shifts
from one persona to another with a change of hat
& a drop in her voice. Her face flushed slightly, like
a glacier at sunrise & there was a rustling of dresses
as the cries of her rapture roused me from my reverie.
Dave Sealey
The Never-ending Economy
“Queue Here” reads the sign
underneath the old railway bridge.
An arrow points towards the wall
networked with ivy tracing mortar-
the road map of the industrial age
in dark green with white flecked veins.
The line begins to form, men and women
in polyester uniforms and crumpled suits,
virgins to hand-outs clutch at tickets-
early birds to an imaginary worm.
Eventually they begin to die, they fall
at the wayside and lose their place.
“Someone should be on the way” they moan.
Imaginary bankers walk amongst them
nudging out pockets into invisible sacks,
grimly extracting their pounds of flesh.
Jordan McMahon
-The Life We Love-
Bleary eyed yet so alive we?re on the road again.
Cursing, screaming, drunk we?re dreaming,
The clock shows 10am.
The familiar haze of excessive days
Subsides and gives way.
Look around, the sights and sounds
They?re ours just for today.
But we have no future, we have no time
No hope or destiny.
Let us wallow in such pleasures,
Let us create some history.
I am Icarus, you see these snow covered wings?
See me choking and drowning on whole manners of things?
Coughing, laughing and crying inside,
Lamenting the child inside which died.
Four to three, three to two and now remains just one.
A delusional world is where this soul has gone.
A place of opportunity, wonder and awe,
A world where the soul is left screaming for more.
More and more, feed it in, I have quite an appetite.
Malcontented and indecisive, its always may or might.
Never planned yet here I stand, living for another day.
Living to wander, living to explore, see whose to meet on the way.
There?s love in the sky today, faces in the clouds,
Embracing as the sun intoxicates those dreaming crowds.
This is the life, the life we do love,
In a field on our backs watching the spectacle above.
Stay here forever, let the earth drag us all down,
Yet before us awaits the neon glow of our dear town.
As the night descends on our beloved friends we?ll take to the city streets,
Burn away time with beer and wine tapping feet to the box fresh beats.
A sense of unity, a sense of belonging, the town is ours tonight.
Rub your eyes look to the skies and beam with ecstatic delight.
Remember laughs and jokes, drinks and smokes, girls left behind,
One things clear, when you were near, I should have kissed you by the waterside.
Oh how suddenly you did change, it hit me like a freight train.
Blood on the dance floor, blood on my sleeve, blood on everything I perceive.
Smoke in their face, tears in their souls, take their hands for they have lost control.
Throw a bottle to show your pain,
Live to wake up and do it over again.
Again and again,
Over and over,
Its always the same,
Swinging from freedom to restrain.
Broken hearts and forgotten truths, such a shame about those hopeful youths.
As the sun sets or rises or whatever you desire.
You?ll find yourself teary eyed far from alive,
For flying too close to the fire.
Simon Leake
up, rising
up, rising
a quiet day
discontent
streets unused
no bird calls
not even the gulls
gone away to sea to spawn
where small groups gather
stories albeit fantasies
with their bearings in reality
are confided in disconsolate strangers
and friends exchange bitchyness
others gone off to Japan,
Canada, Timbuktu…
Bristol, Spring 2008
Taking Breath
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
sat in the window
smoking weed
reading the paper
drinking tea
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
quiet, slow,
easy, changing
new deeper feelings
undercurrents, felt beats
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
watching the Sun fall behind
the opposite side of the street
one year out of thirty
never to repeat
Henry Blake
SHE’S PERFECTION
It hangs in my skull.....
A Gustav Klimt in the Louvre.
Priceless.
Untouchable
My depression is dedicated to me
She comes completely free.
She drives me everywhere I wish to go....
One day she will drive me straight to the
Cemetary without turning left at the lights.
THE DEATH OF MY LIFE DOES NOT INTEREST ME
ANYMORE
I am a very dull man....
I do not speak much and when I do it is not worth repeating.
I hide behind my self imposed exile.
Sometimes I cry with incomprehension of self.
I am a zero man....
You people are my superiors
You breath, smile converse with great ease!
I could never be like you.
Give me love and I will turn it into ugliness
Give me hope I will turn it into despair
I expect nothing,
That is what I receive
Ah,
Ah,
Ah,
I walk into darkness with my atonality.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE CROWN
A gang of girls sat in the corner of the pub
With lager tops and dreams of passion, love.
Bobby, Darren, Steve and Gary laughing at the bar.
Bouncer approaches:
“keep the noise down, lads”
“piss off cannon ball head”
A punch straight to the jaw, broken teeth,
Flying glass, a fractured cheek bone,
A kick to the spleen.
Flashing lights, cops arrive to instigate law and order,
Bust a few skulls.
Darren, Steve, Gary are thrown into the back of a van....
Taken to station for photographs, bed and breakfast.
Poor Bobby was taken to A.N.E with severe lacerations to the
face.
The girls left the pub, walked up through the town centre.
No sexual intercourse tonight.
Chicken and chips will have to suffice.
Ivor C Treby
A cut-glass English accent
I heard this day relate
how she and a companion
had walked down to the Tate,
and there they saw a canvas
in sapphire blue and rose
(the artist is not famous,
a name that no one knows).
This painting with some others
had chanced to catch her eye,
it was, she said, so charming
it made her want to cry;
I could not help but listen,
so cold her voice, so loud,
there in a racking Tube train
it reached me through the crowd.
I marvelled that the artist
in hunger, cold and pain,
should spark this sudden insight,
had laboured not in vain:
no other person heard her
alone with their desires
their heads yet bowed and nodded,
their ears all filled with wires.
Ivor C Treby
The Shearing
That day we all went down to
Derrington. The air once filled
with morning birdsong,calling
waterbirds and finches, now
quite silent, in the unstarred
sky a wide wan opal sun.
Our breath hung iced in fog so
cold it was, crossing the fields
along the old Roman road.
And slowly as the trees broke
up in silver, all those things
the young men thought
they knew, those things
the old men dared not know,
were instant and apparent
We stood upon the fracture
looking out into that great
circumference, treading the
gold and blue diameters
dropping beneath our feet.
About us glowed the envelope
of bright pencilled lines, far
in the frosted sky, long firefly
shoals of starships. And suddenly
we all were running, shouting,
laughing like madmen, climbing
the gliding plates, the tipped
receding planes, the gleaming
comices, the rocking cliffs and
shifting floors. Blinded by flickering
light, the wreathing mist, most
of us soon slipped and plunged
headlong, while others cried out,
wildly jumped and fell. Some raved,
dropped to their knees in prayer.
But none of us that I could see
rejoiced, though several wept.
Polydeoxyribonucleotides rule ok
Aggressive . . . . . all elbows from the starT
This molecule presaged trouble . . . . . . . A
Gorgon tendril . . . . twin-coiled and maniC
Geared for harm . . . beyond the solar disC
Cosmic rays . . . . . . sparked an awakeninG
That triggered . . . . . . . . . a terrible cobrA
Chaos held no hurt . . . . . . . this orderinG
Could only lead to disaster . . . . . . . . lonG
Attaining (slime cell mollusc man) . . . buT
Certain . . . so at once it was war . . . biG
Guns. . . knives. . . axes . . . fusions nucleiC
And all without soul . . . no chance of thaT
Ghost in the machine . . . . blind dynastiC
Greed set species against species . . . . . siC
Transit all flesh . . . . . . . . ape or amoebA
As for good, evil . . . who’d have thoughT
There was no choice? . . through milleniA
Conquest . . . by shortfall and winnowinG
This snake’s more original sin . . . . . . seA
To land to air to space . . . . . . . . . gangliA
Conjured a mind to dream right and wronG
All things . . . . . . . . wavicle to astronauT
Amoral . . . . . . callous . . . . . . indifferenT
God is not . . . . was never . . . . just havoC
Phil Knight
THE WORKMAN
I am an ordinary man
a family man in fact.
You would not look at me
twice if you saw me in
the market or on the bus.
I work regular hours,
my Supervisor says I am
A Information Facilitator
I like that, it much better
then somethings I have been
called.
I work with three other men
they are great guys
you would like them if
you met them outside of work.
We have breakfast together
every morning and we chat about
our wives or last night’s telly,
that’s the real highlight of my day.
Then it’s back to the grindstone.
We go to the Supervisor’s
office and he assigns us
a subject for the day.
First we get the room straight,
I set out the equipment on
a little table. Sometimes
all the subject needs is a
glimpse of that little table
and they melt like butter
that’s a good day.
They always feel better
after talking, yes they do
even if we have to go a bit
further or even a lot further
in the end they always feel
better because people are
basically good and they don’t
want bad things to happen.
But there are hard days when
a subject will just not talk.
So I have to go to the little
table and chose something
a pliers, a belt, a scalper or
the box of electrodes.
But for my money a bucket of water
works best, it’s so simple
people have a natural fear of
drowning and I like to think
the cleaners are grateful
when it is only water they mop up.
I can hear my colleagues coming
so is there anything I can get you
the choice is yours.
WHITEOUT
THE DAY WAS A WHITEOUT
OF WINTERING SNOW
A ONCE IN A BLUE MOON
EVENT IN A GLOBAL WARM ERA.
GUTTERS ARE HANG WITH ICE
AND SNOW IS ON EVERY ROOF.
PERFECT TABLECLOTH LAWNS
ARE MARKED ONLY BY CAT PRINTS.
THE SKY IS AS BLUE AS THE SEA
AND THE VALLEY IS WHITE LIKE
A SKY FULL OF CLOUDS ON A DAY
OF CUMULUS NIMBUS DREAMS.
THE FROST GLAZE IS EVERYWHERE
AND THE AIR TASTES YOUNG AGAIN
AND THE SUN IS BRIGHT WITH LIFE
AND OUR WORLD SOMEWHOW SEEMS GOOD.
Austin Mc Carron
Divine Cities
Divine cities obliterate the silence
grey words sing.
Filled
with a chronic grief the stars meddle.
Foolish fingers count the notes left by
singers in a mechanical store.
Streets of music offer to carry the burden
of sound.
Tormented orchestras with stolen scores
play to a deserted crowd
with instruments of sun and lights of blood.
Fundamental Gods smell out the lyrics with
Impassioned glances and grave unlit smiles.
Metronet
Through streets of gold affliction
we march on fire.
Holding our torches high we write
on the walls
of truth our life of burning secrets.
We smell innocence and ash.
Primitive shadows
follow
us like trickles of forbidden water.
Springing from nowhere,
newly discovered
flames resist our anguished warnings.
Numinous black tongues lash our burnt
faces with the smell of retreating forces,
the diseased
breath of all our smouldering languages.
Sourland
On green streets, blue light,
with swollen voices, aching
to speak. Fugitive plants hide
out in torn gardens until the
colours see. Deaf music plays
to a group of strangers with
broken tongues and concrete feet.
Famous languages fall silent with
murderous sounds and dark potions
in cold rooms. Exhausted windows
reflect all that is sunny and lost.
Great territories, filled with sand,
Speak with pictures of fallen eyes.
Dip into this selection of interesting new poetry books and publications.
Publications
C.L.Dallat
‘The Year of Not Dancing’
Blackstaff Press, Belfast.
www.blackstaffpress.com
Isbn:978-0-85640-840-3
Review
Review
The Year of Not Dancing by C.L. Dallat is a vivid journey into the past. Events unfold to reveal a fascinating story, the viewpoint sometimes taken from that of a child’s, leading the reader back to once familiar territory; the child’s world versus that of the adult world.
The poems read quickly, images and rhythms clipping the tongue and memory, like an old film flickering on the screen. In the poem ‘Lives of the Composers’ the words are beautifully crafted:
Partly the Doric flourish soda- bar chrome
of the Rock-Ola in Joe’s Carousel pavilion –
Dallat uses a musical and unaffected language.
A fascinating read.Thoroughly enjoyed this collection.
Jane Marsh
___________________________________________________________________
William Bedford
‘Collecting Bottle Tops’
Selected Poems 1960-2008
Poetry Salzburg
ISBN: 978-3-901993-27-5
orders@poetrysalsburg.com.
www.poetrysalzburg.com
Entirely New
Writing produced under
The Canterbury Laureate
Programme 2007-2009
Edited by Patrica Debney
Published 2008: Canterbury City Council.
www.write-here.net or www.creativecanterbury.com
The Purpose of Your Visit
River Wolton
Smith/Doorstop Books
The Poetry Business, Bank St Arts, 32-40 Bank St. Sheffield. S1 2DS
ISBN: 978-1-906613-05-1
The Second Fifty
Poems
Jenefer Ann Murray
Palores Publications’ 21st Century Writers
ISBN 978-0-9556682-7-2
ORB Editions
Avant-garde poetry
PO Box 35 Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 3ZF
Email: luminouspress@yahoo.com
www.okok.org.uk
Steve Sneyd
Mistaking the Nature of Posthuman
Hilltop Press
4 Nowell Place
Almondbury
Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, England
ISBN 978-0-905262-42-0
Hilltop press titles are distributed overseas by BBR/NSFA
www.bbr-online.com/catalogue
The McLellan Poetry Award 2009
For poems in Scots and English.
Enter online: www.mclellanawards.co.uk
Closing date: 31st July 2009
________________________________________
http://www.geocities.com/poetshideout/Neon.html
Neon Highway, the magazine for innovative poetry.
Submissions to be sent to the editor:
Alice Lenkiewicz: 37, Grinshill Close, Liverpool, L8 8LD
Email submissions can be sent to: neonhighwaypoetry@yahoo.co.uk
Or send via snailmail to address above. Please always supply a sae for any returned material.
Neon Highway is available bi-annually, with 2 issues costing £5.50, or a single
Issue available at £3.00. Order your next issue by sending a cheque (made out to) to Alice Lenkiewicz.
Please be patient on replies.
If you do not hear about your work within eight weeks, do please contact the editor.
If you would like to write a review for this magazine or if you would be interested in being interviewed by assistant editor, Jane Marsh, please contact us on the email above.
Neon Highway is a non-profit making magazine.
We do encourage you to subscribe.
We are grateful to all the subscribers who have kept ‘Neon Highway’ in print over the years.
Issue 16
Contents
Note from Jane Marsh: pages 3-6
Eunice Ogunkoya: pages 7-8
Sam Smith: page 9
Kim Goldberg: pages10-11
Richard Asworth: page 12 (Collage)
Janet Currie: page: page 13
Carlos Nogueiras: pages 14- 15
Fergus Dick: pages 16-17
Kate Edwards: pages 18-20
Geoffrey Loe: pages 21-22
Steve Spence: pages 23-24
Dave Sealey: page 25
Jordan McMahon: pages 26-27
Simon Leake: pages 27-28
Henry Blake: pages 28-30
Ivor C Treby: pages 31-33
Phil Knight: pages 34-35
Austin Mc Carron: pages 36-37
Publications: pages 38-39
Sunscription: page 40
Front Cover and page 12. Artwork by the artist, Richard Ashworth.
ashworth_richard_66@hotmail.com
Introduction
June 2009
Jane Marsh
(Some thoughts on plastic surgery and achieving perfection)
I feel lately, I am getting older. I no longer gain the attention I once received as a younger woman. You discover many programmes these days about women having surgery, makeovers, implants and botox and god knows what else.
However, I do think, unless you have a real physical ailment it is not worth it. I also think that faces and bodies are a little like creating paintings and poems. There is that neverending desire to keep going, to try and improve, to make it better, to disect and to edit, to build and rebuild.
The only trouble is, that you can’t really do that with your face so easily. Have you ever noticed how people always want a bit more done to themselves? Even after they have had an important aspect rebuilt, such as the nose for instance! They are still not satisfied. I have an explanation for this and I think it is one of the reasons why many people get hooked onto this ridiculous obsession. It’s what I call the ‘Frankensteining’ of oneself, the obsessional need to re-create, of taking control and re-building the body. If all goes wrong, of course, we are dissatisfied. Even if it is fine, we then become what I call ‘Phantom of the opera’. We hide away, can’t face ourselves, don’t want to go out, fall into self- hate which is something similar to what we had in the first place before we ‘frankensteined’ ourselves and therefore we are capable of becoming compulsive in our desire to change the way we look.
So why do I disagree with these changes? I feel it is how we are taught to look at ourselves and we need to get beyond this ‘frankensteining’ and instead look at the beauty within ourselves that exists already that needs to come out instead of being hidden or changed. Why cover a flower in spray paint if it is a beautiful flower already?
There are similarities to painting and poetry. For instance, if you put red into a painting it will need to be balanced out with other colours to make it the right amount and to give it the right harmony and composition in the overall painting and the same with words, if you add a word into a poem that seems harsh for instance or sounds odd to the ear, you may want to balance it out with other sounds to emphasise the language you are using. The great thing is of course that you do at least have the opportunity to change things, but this isn’t so easy with physical selves. So, when a person has their nose changed, for instance, they will be excited and may think that once the nose is changed, that they will look ‘prettier’ or ‘better’ in some way. But it is all relative. You could look prettier or worse depending on the rest of your face.
For instance, you have now had your operation. Although the nose is now what you always wanted, unfortuntaly it has now inadversedly changed the width of your cheekbones and has now set the face offbalance in a certain way as to distract from what were previously some of your better features, for instance the eyes or the mouth. So now, you may be thinking about or needing to have another job done to raise your eyes, to make them more slanted or something done to your mouth to compensate for your new nose.
I often want to say to celebrities. Leave yourself alone! What they seem to forget and miss out on, is that the features we all have are all in harmony with our other features so if you change something, then it will automatically make the other features change also, so you have to realise that your one change will affect everything as a whole, as a result of one simple aspect changing. It won’t just be the one feature that will change. I can understand of course that sometimes there is a feelgood factor to all of this and that sometimes it is necessary to change in order to benefit more confidence but only if necessary...please!
Also, another piece of advice. Don’t think that by having a feature from a famous person will necessarily make you look like that person or even change you greatly. I will give you an example. Imagine you are looking at a painting of the great Mona Lisa and you decide to give her a different nose, and you want her to have a cute little nose. Let’s try it. Let us give her Reese Witherspoon’s nose as below.
Example 1.
The question is, even if we like this better, what is the point? It looked okay in the first place and is this nose on this face really any better? She looks different but not amazing and basically this nose looks better on the face of Reese Witherspoon because it goes in harmony with the other features of Reese. Now imagine that it wasn’t Reese Witherspoon’s nose that you wanted and instead it was your idol, Kate Winslet’s nose and you think if you give Mona Lisa, Kate Winslet’s nose then everything will be amazing and she will forever look just like Kate Winslet. So lets give it a go.
Example 2.
As you can see it looks surprisingly identical to the original Mona Lisa nose. Therfore this just goes to prove that by using the nose of the person you feel most attached to, for instance, Kate Winslet, doesn’t necessarily mean that you will end up looking much different than you did in the first place.
I hope you have enjoyed Jane Marshe’s beauty therapy advice and learnt that you are also a unique masterpiece and like the Mona Lisa you should not be tampered with because as you can see we can go on forvever finding the right nose and never be satisfied, so why not keep it as it was originally? A beautiful nose in its own right as the Mona Lisa has proved over many
centuries.
All the very best.
Jane Marsh.
Eunice Ogunkoya
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
Whilst waiting for life to begin at forty
As her first-born child approaches adulthood
She imagines what it would be like
To be stuck at the age of sixteen
Not yet an adult
But no longer a child.
Being a caring mother
And at the big crossroad of life
She wonders whether he would rather be
Like Jack and the Beanstalk
Or like Peter Pan in Neverland
He's trying ever so hard
To fulfill all the hopes of achievement
Being expected of him
But yet he's got to make major decisions
About whether or not to strive
To join the race to lose virginity
To take up a human vice
To aim for an ASBO award.
And what about responsibilities?
Old enough for some
Too young for others
Who should decide?
Perhaps he should
He's ever so fearless
Unlike good old-cautious she.
She imagines how he must feel
What with all the peer pressure
And that from her
It must be ever so confusing
Being stuck in the middle
Especially with her in limbo too.
They both deserve some respite and rescue
From this precarious position
In the halfway house of hope
By means of the magnet of salvation
And the alarm clock,
To avoid being suck in a moment in time.
MIRROR, MIRAGE, MIRACLES
Reflecting light rays from a concrete plane
Of silvered glass
Disclosing desires and dislikes
With clear-cut images
This is the mirror that cancels mirk.
Reflecting light rays from a visual plane
Of heated air
Distorting delusions and distress
With glimpses of water
This is the mirage that causes mire.
Reflecting light rays from abstract planes
Of thoughtful minds
Discerning dreams and dispelling doubts
With true brillant outcomes
These are miracles that create mirth.
Sam Smith
Acceptance
The grief that bursts in a blasting out
shout of despair, whole of the torso
bone-racked and rocking;
and goes on
for one long, sore-eyed waking is, all told
probably the best cure for such loss.
A death greeted with instant numbness
that looks on, is composed, equally still....
And yet grief has snuck in, has become
a blister ready to be popped, lies
in wait for another loss, trivial maybe....
a broken toy?
a missed appointment?
and then the snot-spluttering howl,
bystanders looking to one another puzzled.
Lock-In
....hero herein heroin .... searching by means of mental mirrors for some mislaid idea — pearls are dried oyster spit? — such a self-appointed task can still be a binding act that does not allow time or mind-space for self-wonder .... in a shut-in life, unpeopled and uneventful, early evening comes up against the barrier, an awareness of yet unspent time, hectare after hectare of grey terrain to be crossed, and with the tired brain unable to offer any distraction, the only company this hollow muscular sac, the heart; and in the beckoning distance absence in sleep....
Crown of Thorns
Kim Goldberg
the sperm of
jesus christ is believed to be
a snail
a hermaphrodite
will swoop and dive in unison
by certain schools of devout christians
the snails sex life
as well as some atheists
is unbelievably complicated to start with
the evidence offered includes
they are hermaphrodites each possessing a vagina and
the virgin birth since high school biology
two penises
tells us this can only lead to
mating
two X chromosomes
can take up to twelve hours
the position is further supported by much
which is understandable
early medieval art depicting
the foreplay involves firing
jesus as a woman
solid (and often lethal)
complete with breasts suggesting
darts
the true reason they all came
into each others bodies
to behold
(Assembled from Worlds Within Worlds microbiology textbook
and blog postings about Jesus)
* * *
The Breaking of Waves
Crashed
as wave, as borderless boundarygone
toptorn wave Cast
out
from shorn
sea, from wonderless stupefied
uniform sea Left to
wander
the beach
the forsaken legless genreless
beach The
unstoppered
wave, taking
not shape not precision not scissors
to cloth The naked
wave
when fundamentals
fall away, when spent thought lies
splayed In tall
grass
vacant as
shotguns, vanished as brainstems
writ In wet sand
blashpemous
banished, clamped
as bass jaw, upswept as gulls, shunned
staked Unflocked
expatriated
becoming
the rolling wave, the locating wave, the unshapable
wave The
unbroken wave
* * *
Janet Currie
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Carlos Nogueiras
Childish Dreams
A phoney ceiling in the sky, like a sheet of greyness
To dampen her childish dreams of big city lights.
The men she slept with for money always wore cheap
Suits, travelling salesmen with ordinary families, car
Payments and mortgages to trouble their minds, men
Who often discovered something new and profoundly
Liberating buried between her thighs: A momentary
Escape from the rat race, a quick release from the
Tyranny of life, and she was making money, plenty of
Money, and saving it for a rainy day which glistened
In the distance on the edge of nowhere, like one
Of her clients, fully satisfied with her willingness
To please, yet muttering to himself obscene words
Pregnant with the mystery of a foreign tongue.
Maldito River
Her body sunk in the Maldito River,
Floating there peacefully unclaimed,
Enticing the bloodsuckers thirsty
For the scent of redness under
Warm inviting skin, a gang of black
Scabs clung to shivering flesh,
She would have to burn those off
Applying the healing power of
A match, a task assigned
To an angelic stranger who pulled
Her out of water, and thus
Voluntarily assumed the role of
Saviour by holding her down as
He plucked the evildoers off her
Body with his bare hands.
She squirmed and winced for
The pain was intense, then offered
Herself to him- who shook his
Head and mutely declined, walking
Away with a trace of regret
Painted in his dark vigilant eyes.
Fergus Dick
A3
There’s a hole the size of a bath tub in
The middle of the carriageway at the
Crossing of Cedars Road and Long Road.
Where on rushed winter mornings a cyclist
May jump the lights with desperation
In fear of imminent observation
By men from Offsted in cream silk cravats.
And Clapham Common snorts away to port
With distant dogs of no particular sort.
The trunk road exhibits this chasm
Leaving queuing white van men in spasm,
As they rev their utes in growing folly
Scared of missing Grandma Lerner’s lolly
She’ll spread the loot to other worthy guys
Who weren’t so startling blown by surprise
Who didn’t dip their 1990 chassis
Cold steel crunch in the crucial thoroughfare
London to Guildford via Wandsworth.
Fergus Dick
the Death of the Supermarket
When Tescoe and Sainsbury
are old-fashioned
when the bright young branch manager
looks back on the boom
from his retirement home in Henley
I hope he knows how many blows
to the chin and gut
of so many valuable things
he struck
with his re-arrangement of the store.
Kate Edwards
Deep Night Loving.
There was a time,
lying in deep grass
under a melting moon.
you, kissing my lips,
kissing my pale skin,
all set fair, love forever,
lying always each on each,
body on body, mind on mind,
such longing, such passion,
flesh seeking flesh,
sweat mixing with sweat,
bodies fitting, joining,
rising to a sudden ecstasy,
the collapse into satiety,
limbs tangled, enfeebled,
murmers of enduring love,
of everlasting desire.
Why did the night suddenly seem colder,
the moon glide, hiding behind a cloud?
A Small Adventure.
Out of the door,
along the lane
scented with shrubs,
white candles
lighting the chestnuts,
torches in the night.
I run through streets,
houses with tidy gardens,
moon-paled azaleas,
star-spiked magnolia.
I reach the track
to the wild wood,
I find a place to lie,
a soft and fern strewn hollow,
a deep earth smell.
Branches shelter above,
night air caressing me,
I lie back, watching
the revolving universe.
The moon is thin,
the stars are far apart,
lanterns in vacancy.
A heavy rustling
disturbs the dark
beyond my shelter,
startled I swiftly rise,
running back to the streets,
to lights, to safety.
It was
a small adventure
perfumed by the night.
----------------------------
‘Can’t we still be friends…’
This
after a short, disjointed conversation in which
you told me nothing after your first words,
‘I ‘m out of it.’
Out of this situation, you meant, out of this affair,
this erotic kinship
this body on body,
this mind on mind,
now revealed for the illusion it was. A quote
hazed in my head, ‘I have been so deceived.’
A week I had waited for you, dressed and perfumed,
each night watching the dusk fail, an indigo sky
robbing the trees of colour. Another drink,
a hand reaching for the phone, then retreating,
a book unread, thrown careless on the floor,
the scent of Rive Gauche on my skin
sickening me. Thinking every minute, every moment
I would hear your car, your footsteps.
Now this.
A broken voice on the line, almost sobbing.
‘Don’t pretend to be upset!’ I hissed, ‘it is you
who is ending it. All I want to know is why,
tell me why, I’ll ask no more, but tell me why.’
You couldn’t or wouldn’t. You left me empty,
no reasons, no excuses, no explanations, just
those foolish words repeated, ‘Can’t we still be friends.’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ I shouted, banging down the phone
and staring through a window at a world turned bleak,
turned grey and ordinary, the shining gone, gone
with the deep night longing, the searching, the joining,
mouth on mouth, part to part, compelling fusion.
I never did discover why you wanted this no longer.
Geoffrey Loe
WITH BUILT-IN RADIO
The prostitutes move inland on Christmas Day
to stalk solitary men like seagulls in
a boat’s wake. Their unfamiliar words
just aggravate until ‘darling’ restrains.
Where the dirt of boredom’s trodden on,
this square could be a prison yard, sky-high
with cameras. That man’s spun a yarn but looks
as though it’s canteen day. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’
Later, his mind will take him down the block,
investigate his ruin. While shopping
explodes in climax at the till, he should
have waited for the sales. He’d know nothing.
But won’t be content, if adverts arouse
him still. They leave you feeling you’re one short
of a six-pack, a sandwhich from a picnic.
He’s seen Bangkok to leer in Heathrow’s squall
and might say it’s just like wanking-robbing,
though, seems more honest as it quietly meets
the needs of kleptomaniacs and the poor,
who know the jingle: If the alarm sounds, run.
BLOWN AWAY
Shot, I staggered to one wall, another,
Eyes all disbelief, guts hanging out.
My pulse was racing to a finish.
I would die in a minute. I would die.
The world stopped spinning in the corner, but
I was a boxer on the referee’s shoulder:
Legs jelly, arms like lead; bricks blurred and then
My throat filled up with anger. Looking down
The puddled alley, the most beautiful
Girl I ever knew, said, ‘Sorry,’ Tottering
To her, I fell among the dustbins. Bitch.
My breath unsteady, clouds enclosed the moon.
Steve Spence
Slowed down, it’s a performance full of grace
As I watched her gazing out past the other boats
in the bay, I heard the pirate whisper in her ear.
“This week we’re going to look skywards & marvel
at the mystery of clouds”. His early works have
that tinge of melancholic wit, a comical mismatch
between the banal & the sublime, yet as the
economic slowdown starts to bite, are we seeing
a backlash against green policies? There was a
full moon the night I moved in & it literally filled
the room. When a butterfly leaves the safety of
its cocoon, does it realise how beautiful it has
become? Here, on the other side of the island,
the view is entirely different, yet the interior of the
ship is decorated in a similar pastiche baroque style.
It has been suggested that strobe lighting is an
optional extra.
Every time a flare rose up towards the sky,
the figure of a pirate stood out plainly against the
dark background. There is a great variety of fauna
on the island, including several comparatively
rare species. This week we’re going to look skywards
& marvel at the mystery of clouds. People in the
street can be incredibly aggressive but it’s easy to
lose the nuthatch’s song in the middle of a woodland
chorus. Alice was as interested in man-made clouds
as in the natural variety, yet choosing your aperture
or what you want in-focus, helps define your role as
a photographer. She hesitated & the stranger caught
her by the throat again. As waves swept the decks &
guns broke adrift, they made their way towards the
jutting spit of land at the tip of the crescent of sand.
Strobe lighting is an optional extra.
Last night I met draco, the pirate who modelled for
Salvador Dali. Soon I was surrounded by dancing
buccaneers, armed with pistols & cutlasses, yet
the terror of waking up in an alien world has never
been more eloquently expressed. Suddenly, there
was a loud bang in the parlour & I hurried in to behold
the captain lying full-length upon the floor. It was not
Alice who hesitated but the man whose authority had
brought her here. He was finicky & fastidious, with
a dandy’s taste in waistcoats. How she longed to get
out of that dark, sunless cabin & wander around
among those beds of bright flowers. Yet she shifts
from one persona to another with a change of hat
& a drop in her voice. Her face flushed slightly, like
a glacier at sunrise & there was a rustling of dresses
as the cries of her rapture roused me from my reverie.
Dave Sealey
The Never-ending Economy
“Queue Here” reads the sign
underneath the old railway bridge.
An arrow points towards the wall
networked with ivy tracing mortar-
the road map of the industrial age
in dark green with white flecked veins.
The line begins to form, men and women
in polyester uniforms and crumpled suits,
virgins to hand-outs clutch at tickets-
early birds to an imaginary worm.
Eventually they begin to die, they fall
at the wayside and lose their place.
“Someone should be on the way” they moan.
Imaginary bankers walk amongst them
nudging out pockets into invisible sacks,
grimly extracting their pounds of flesh.
Jordan McMahon
-The Life We Love-
Bleary eyed yet so alive we?re on the road again.
Cursing, screaming, drunk we?re dreaming,
The clock shows 10am.
The familiar haze of excessive days
Subsides and gives way.
Look around, the sights and sounds
They?re ours just for today.
But we have no future, we have no time
No hope or destiny.
Let us wallow in such pleasures,
Let us create some history.
I am Icarus, you see these snow covered wings?
See me choking and drowning on whole manners of things?
Coughing, laughing and crying inside,
Lamenting the child inside which died.
Four to three, three to two and now remains just one.
A delusional world is where this soul has gone.
A place of opportunity, wonder and awe,
A world where the soul is left screaming for more.
More and more, feed it in, I have quite an appetite.
Malcontented and indecisive, its always may or might.
Never planned yet here I stand, living for another day.
Living to wander, living to explore, see whose to meet on the way.
There?s love in the sky today, faces in the clouds,
Embracing as the sun intoxicates those dreaming crowds.
This is the life, the life we do love,
In a field on our backs watching the spectacle above.
Stay here forever, let the earth drag us all down,
Yet before us awaits the neon glow of our dear town.
As the night descends on our beloved friends we?ll take to the city streets,
Burn away time with beer and wine tapping feet to the box fresh beats.
A sense of unity, a sense of belonging, the town is ours tonight.
Rub your eyes look to the skies and beam with ecstatic delight.
Remember laughs and jokes, drinks and smokes, girls left behind,
One things clear, when you were near, I should have kissed you by the waterside.
Oh how suddenly you did change, it hit me like a freight train.
Blood on the dance floor, blood on my sleeve, blood on everything I perceive.
Smoke in their face, tears in their souls, take their hands for they have lost control.
Throw a bottle to show your pain,
Live to wake up and do it over again.
Again and again,
Over and over,
Its always the same,
Swinging from freedom to restrain.
Broken hearts and forgotten truths, such a shame about those hopeful youths.
As the sun sets or rises or whatever you desire.
You?ll find yourself teary eyed far from alive,
For flying too close to the fire.
Simon Leake
up, rising
up, rising
a quiet day
discontent
streets unused
no bird calls
not even the gulls
gone away to sea to spawn
where small groups gather
stories albeit fantasies
with their bearings in reality
are confided in disconsolate strangers
and friends exchange bitchyness
others gone off to Japan,
Canada, Timbuktu…
Bristol, Spring 2008
Taking Breath
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
sat in the window
smoking weed
reading the paper
drinking tea
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
quiet, slow,
easy, changing
new deeper feelings
undercurrents, felt beats
Sunday mornings
Hertford street
watching the Sun fall behind
the opposite side of the street
one year out of thirty
never to repeat
Henry Blake
SHE’S PERFECTION
It hangs in my skull.....
A Gustav Klimt in the Louvre.
Priceless.
Untouchable
My depression is dedicated to me
She comes completely free.
She drives me everywhere I wish to go....
One day she will drive me straight to the
Cemetary without turning left at the lights.
THE DEATH OF MY LIFE DOES NOT INTEREST ME
ANYMORE
I am a very dull man....
I do not speak much and when I do it is not worth repeating.
I hide behind my self imposed exile.
Sometimes I cry with incomprehension of self.
I am a zero man....
You people are my superiors
You breath, smile converse with great ease!
I could never be like you.
Give me love and I will turn it into ugliness
Give me hope I will turn it into despair
I expect nothing,
That is what I receive
Ah,
Ah,
Ah,
I walk into darkness with my atonality.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE CROWN
A gang of girls sat in the corner of the pub
With lager tops and dreams of passion, love.
Bobby, Darren, Steve and Gary laughing at the bar.
Bouncer approaches:
“keep the noise down, lads”
“piss off cannon ball head”
A punch straight to the jaw, broken teeth,
Flying glass, a fractured cheek bone,
A kick to the spleen.
Flashing lights, cops arrive to instigate law and order,
Bust a few skulls.
Darren, Steve, Gary are thrown into the back of a van....
Taken to station for photographs, bed and breakfast.
Poor Bobby was taken to A.N.E with severe lacerations to the
face.
The girls left the pub, walked up through the town centre.
No sexual intercourse tonight.
Chicken and chips will have to suffice.
Ivor C Treby
A cut-glass English accent
I heard this day relate
how she and a companion
had walked down to the Tate,
and there they saw a canvas
in sapphire blue and rose
(the artist is not famous,
a name that no one knows).
This painting with some others
had chanced to catch her eye,
it was, she said, so charming
it made her want to cry;
I could not help but listen,
so cold her voice, so loud,
there in a racking Tube train
it reached me through the crowd.
I marvelled that the artist
in hunger, cold and pain,
should spark this sudden insight,
had laboured not in vain:
no other person heard her
alone with their desires
their heads yet bowed and nodded,
their ears all filled with wires.
Ivor C Treby
The Shearing
That day we all went down to
Derrington. The air once filled
with morning birdsong,calling
waterbirds and finches, now
quite silent, in the unstarred
sky a wide wan opal sun.
Our breath hung iced in fog so
cold it was, crossing the fields
along the old Roman road.
And slowly as the trees broke
up in silver, all those things
the young men thought
they knew, those things
the old men dared not know,
were instant and apparent
We stood upon the fracture
looking out into that great
circumference, treading the
gold and blue diameters
dropping beneath our feet.
About us glowed the envelope
of bright pencilled lines, far
in the frosted sky, long firefly
shoals of starships. And suddenly
we all were running, shouting,
laughing like madmen, climbing
the gliding plates, the tipped
receding planes, the gleaming
comices, the rocking cliffs and
shifting floors. Blinded by flickering
light, the wreathing mist, most
of us soon slipped and plunged
headlong, while others cried out,
wildly jumped and fell. Some raved,
dropped to their knees in prayer.
But none of us that I could see
rejoiced, though several wept.
Polydeoxyribonucleotides rule ok
Aggressive . . . . . all elbows from the starT
This molecule presaged trouble . . . . . . . A
Gorgon tendril . . . . twin-coiled and maniC
Geared for harm . . . beyond the solar disC
Cosmic rays . . . . . . sparked an awakeninG
That triggered . . . . . . . . . a terrible cobrA
Chaos held no hurt . . . . . . . this orderinG
Could only lead to disaster . . . . . . . . lonG
Attaining (slime cell mollusc man) . . . buT
Certain . . . so at once it was war . . . biG
Guns. . . knives. . . axes . . . fusions nucleiC
And all without soul . . . no chance of thaT
Ghost in the machine . . . . blind dynastiC
Greed set species against species . . . . . siC
Transit all flesh . . . . . . . . ape or amoebA
As for good, evil . . . who’d have thoughT
There was no choice? . . through milleniA
Conquest . . . by shortfall and winnowinG
This snake’s more original sin . . . . . . seA
To land to air to space . . . . . . . . . gangliA
Conjured a mind to dream right and wronG
All things . . . . . . . . wavicle to astronauT
Amoral . . . . . . callous . . . . . . indifferenT
God is not . . . . was never . . . . just havoC
Phil Knight
THE WORKMAN
I am an ordinary man
a family man in fact.
You would not look at me
twice if you saw me in
the market or on the bus.
I work regular hours,
my Supervisor says I am
A Information Facilitator
I like that, it much better
then somethings I have been
called.
I work with three other men
they are great guys
you would like them if
you met them outside of work.
We have breakfast together
every morning and we chat about
our wives or last night’s telly,
that’s the real highlight of my day.
Then it’s back to the grindstone.
We go to the Supervisor’s
office and he assigns us
a subject for the day.
First we get the room straight,
I set out the equipment on
a little table. Sometimes
all the subject needs is a
glimpse of that little table
and they melt like butter
that’s a good day.
They always feel better
after talking, yes they do
even if we have to go a bit
further or even a lot further
in the end they always feel
better because people are
basically good and they don’t
want bad things to happen.
But there are hard days when
a subject will just not talk.
So I have to go to the little
table and chose something
a pliers, a belt, a scalper or
the box of electrodes.
But for my money a bucket of water
works best, it’s so simple
people have a natural fear of
drowning and I like to think
the cleaners are grateful
when it is only water they mop up.
I can hear my colleagues coming
so is there anything I can get you
the choice is yours.
WHITEOUT
THE DAY WAS A WHITEOUT
OF WINTERING SNOW
A ONCE IN A BLUE MOON
EVENT IN A GLOBAL WARM ERA.
GUTTERS ARE HANG WITH ICE
AND SNOW IS ON EVERY ROOF.
PERFECT TABLECLOTH LAWNS
ARE MARKED ONLY BY CAT PRINTS.
THE SKY IS AS BLUE AS THE SEA
AND THE VALLEY IS WHITE LIKE
A SKY FULL OF CLOUDS ON A DAY
OF CUMULUS NIMBUS DREAMS.
THE FROST GLAZE IS EVERYWHERE
AND THE AIR TASTES YOUNG AGAIN
AND THE SUN IS BRIGHT WITH LIFE
AND OUR WORLD SOMEWHOW SEEMS GOOD.
Austin Mc Carron
Divine Cities
Divine cities obliterate the silence
grey words sing.
Filled
with a chronic grief the stars meddle.
Foolish fingers count the notes left by
singers in a mechanical store.
Streets of music offer to carry the burden
of sound.
Tormented orchestras with stolen scores
play to a deserted crowd
with instruments of sun and lights of blood.
Fundamental Gods smell out the lyrics with
Impassioned glances and grave unlit smiles.
Metronet
Through streets of gold affliction
we march on fire.
Holding our torches high we write
on the walls
of truth our life of burning secrets.
We smell innocence and ash.
Primitive shadows
follow
us like trickles of forbidden water.
Springing from nowhere,
newly discovered
flames resist our anguished warnings.
Numinous black tongues lash our burnt
faces with the smell of retreating forces,
the diseased
breath of all our smouldering languages.
Sourland
On green streets, blue light,
with swollen voices, aching
to speak. Fugitive plants hide
out in torn gardens until the
colours see. Deaf music plays
to a group of strangers with
broken tongues and concrete feet.
Famous languages fall silent with
murderous sounds and dark potions
in cold rooms. Exhausted windows
reflect all that is sunny and lost.
Great territories, filled with sand,
Speak with pictures of fallen eyes.
Dip into this selection of interesting new poetry books and publications.
Publications
C.L.Dallat
‘The Year of Not Dancing’
Blackstaff Press, Belfast.
www.blackstaffpress.com
Isbn:978-0-85640-840-3
Review
Review
The Year of Not Dancing by C.L. Dallat is a vivid journey into the past. Events unfold to reveal a fascinating story, the viewpoint sometimes taken from that of a child’s, leading the reader back to once familiar territory; the child’s world versus that of the adult world.
The poems read quickly, images and rhythms clipping the tongue and memory, like an old film flickering on the screen. In the poem ‘Lives of the Composers’ the words are beautifully crafted:
Partly the Doric flourish soda- bar chrome
of the Rock-Ola in Joe’s Carousel pavilion –
Dallat uses a musical and unaffected language.
A fascinating read.Thoroughly enjoyed this collection.
Jane Marsh
___________________________________________________________________
William Bedford
‘Collecting Bottle Tops’
Selected Poems 1960-2008
Poetry Salzburg
ISBN: 978-3-901993-27-5
orders@poetrysalsburg.com.
www.poetrysalzburg.com
Entirely New
Writing produced under
The Canterbury Laureate
Programme 2007-2009
Edited by Patrica Debney
Published 2008: Canterbury City Council.
www.write-here.net or www.creativecanterbury.com
The Purpose of Your Visit
River Wolton
Smith/Doorstop Books
The Poetry Business, Bank St Arts, 32-40 Bank St. Sheffield. S1 2DS
ISBN: 978-1-906613-05-1
The Second Fifty
Poems
Jenefer Ann Murray
Palores Publications’ 21st Century Writers
ISBN 978-0-9556682-7-2
ORB Editions
Avant-garde poetry
PO Box 35 Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 3ZF
Email: luminouspress@yahoo.com
www.okok.org.uk
Steve Sneyd
Mistaking the Nature of Posthuman
Hilltop Press
4 Nowell Place
Almondbury
Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, England
ISBN 978-0-905262-42-0
Hilltop press titles are distributed overseas by BBR/NSFA
www.bbr-online.com/catalogue
The McLellan Poetry Award 2009
For poems in Scots and English.
Enter online: www.mclellanawards.co.uk
Closing date: 31st July 2009
________________________________________
http://www.geocities.com/poetshideout/Neon.html
Neon Highway, the magazine for innovative poetry.
Submissions to be sent to the editor:
Alice Lenkiewicz: 37, Grinshill Close, Liverpool, L8 8LD
Email submissions can be sent to: neonhighwaypoetry@yahoo.co.uk
Or send via snailmail to address above. Please always supply a sae for any returned material.
Neon Highway is available bi-annually, with 2 issues costing £5.50, or a single
Issue available at £3.00. Order your next issue by sending a cheque (made out to) to Alice Lenkiewicz.
Please be patient on replies.
If you do not hear about your work within eight weeks, do please contact the editor.
If you would like to write a review for this magazine or if you would be interested in being interviewed by assistant editor, Jane Marsh, please contact us on the email above.
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