Monday, 3 January 2011

ISSUE: 17

Neon Highway ISSN: 1476-9867


Issue 17

(In process of editing this for webpage)







































Contents

Introduction by Jane Marsh. P. 3

The First Collection. (New addition) P. 4

Clare Saponia. P. 5-6

Andrew Smith. P 6-7

Mark Pritchard. P 7- 9

Marc Carver. P 9-11

Colin Roberts. P 12-13

Ashley Bovan. P 13-14

Colin Beck. P 14

Henry Blake. P 15-16

A Catterall. P 16-19 Chris Hardy. P 19-21 David Hudson. P 22-23 Andrew Nightingale. P 23- 25 Kevin Meeham. P 25-28 Mel Quetzcoatl. P 28-29

Cristogianni Borsella. P 29-30

Simon Turner. P 30-31

Jonathan Doherty. P31-32

Mary Ocher. P 32-33

Simon Hambrook. P 33

Sarah Woolsey.P 34-35

Tom George. P 35- 37

Subscription. P. 38

3



Dear readers, welcome to Neon Highway issue seventeen. We have some fabulous poets

in this issue. I have been well, thank you very much but I will tell you a little story.

Yesterday, I walked up to a stranger in the street and I said, “Will you marry me?” I know this was very naughty of me but something just made me want to do it. I can‟t explain why.

Society can sometimes be so mundane. Thank god we live in our heads. I can‟t think of anything worse than „newspeak‟. You can despise certain things around you but at least you can enjoy the fact that you still have your own thoughts and ideas. Anyway, as I was saying, I walked up to this man. He was carrying a briefcase to work and wearing one of those smart suits and a bowler hat. I haven‟t seen a bowler hat in a long time.

I saw him walking across the bridge towards the embankment along the River Thames..

I kind of followed him. I know that is terrible. I don‟t usually do that sort of thing but you see, he reminded me of someone I used to like years ago and I thought, wouldn‟t it be strange if it really was him but obviously it could not have been, after-all this man I had liked had lived in Prague. We had met on the other side of Charles Bridge for coffee. It isn‟t that often that you bump into someone from Prague from the past as you are walking out of the tube station from Superdrug, after buying some shampoo and conditioner.

So there I was following him along the embankment in my new nineteen twenties outfit bought from my secret retro store on Brick Lane when all of a sudden he turns around and stares at me. We just stood there gazing at each other like we are in some kind of surreal trance and you know what? I could not believe it. If seeing and hearing is believing, he said “Jane, what are you doing here?” It was just so amazing. His name I remember is Antonio and we are meeting for a drink tomorrow night to catch up on all our adventures.

Isn‟t life just such a wonderful blessing at times? X

In the mean time, may the wondrous force of beauty and the exotic and demure mysterious imagination of nature be bestowed upon you all and don‟t forget I am now giving a spotlight to first collections of poetry and prose.

Jane.

X

4


First Collection














Send me your first collection and I will showcase

your book here and offer it some tender loving care.

Alice Lenkiewicz

'Men Hate Blondes'

Debut collection of poems and drawings,

£8.00 Original Plus books.

http://thesamsmith.webs.com/originalpluscollections.htm

ISBN 978-0-9562433-4-8

Lisa Jones

‘At 3 o’clock I think of Sex and Death’

Debut collection by Liverpool poet and musician, Lisa Jones.

Spike Press, 96 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4HY

http://www.spikepublishing.wordpress.com

ISBN 978 – 0 -946057-89-4

Siobhan Logan

'Firebridge to Skyshore'

A Northern Lights Journey: £8.00

Original plus books.

http://thesamsmith.webs.com/originalpluscollections.htm

ISBN: 978-0-9546801-7-6




5

Clare Saponia



for searching


Is it worth demystifying?
When the proportions
are right and the blanket
warm and familiar?
So that you don’t have to
look in the mirror,
because everything is a
mirror. And nature still
needs to explain itself.

Why can’t you stop
looking for oracles? Isn’t
there a freedom in you
own values beyond
institution and era, where
persistence is not
dependent on reward?

the next of everything

The next of everything and
how it began; the
contemplation of
devils under pressure to
select
and move on,
new fleeting choice
and nothing
finished. Just
peeling and
cracking in
obtuse ascent, over
and over,
the toes to
the heels and up
with a light
discretion of tone
in generation.

He took the
alarm-clock out
for a walk.
There seem to
be so many
unopened letters.


Andrew Smith

Chorus

There is a green leaf outside
That flatters itself by waving
its thin breast against the window
trying to grab my attention,
it’s saying
ME
ME
ME
why not
It only has one leaf fluttering
In a dance
and two
skinny buds left without solace
it only has one more
hold in the wind,
one last chance to be something
while the green shines through
the sun
and the wind
forgetting what it last did.


Mark Pritchard

EPITHANY ON THE WHEEL

Big bloody fairground attraction, in the centre of London town.

Ridiculous wheel, that offers the prospect of a view.

Tourist magnet, for Japanese and American suburbanites.

Don’t forget to take your camera.

Capture an inane grin, as you tower over Big Ben.

First holiday in five years, and I find myself here.

A lost man, with parents who pity him.

I promised to never holiday again.

Last time, I scared people with my solitary nature.

A week at the seaside, drunk and getting thrown out of bars.

But the parents pressured, and I agreed to go with them.

8

So, now I wait in line for our turn on the stupid bloody wheel.

Been in London for four days, haven’t smiled once.

The slow crawl of the wheel, and a smiling employee motions to us.

Our turn, the ‘flight’ begins.

Yes, they actually call it a ‘flight.’

Five people in our shuttle.

Mum, Dad, a young couple and Rorshach.

The young couple are lost in their world of romance.

Holding hands, their lives are just beginning.

I sit on the bench, and look at the floor.

“Stand up Rorsh, you’re missing the view.”

“okay mum.”

How to describe the view?

Concrete and light blanket a million lost and lonely souls.

That will do.

“Isn’t it great?”

“Yeah mum, it’s great”

The young couple ask me to take a photograph of them.

I am happy to do so.

They smile.

I point the camera and click

They look so happy, beaming with radiance and life.

Enjoying a love that I’ve never possessed.

9

The tears start to well, as I think of my own failure.

I sit down on the bench, and a tear falls.

Wiped away, before the parents can see.

“Isn’t it a beautiful view?”

“Yes mum it is.”

“It sure is.”

The ride slowly comes to an end.

The young couple go out into the night.

I go back to the hotel.

With mum.

And Dad.

And spend the night, writing this poem.

Marc Carver

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

I want to live in a lighthouse and watch the sun rip itself from the sea everyday.

Listen to the waves tangle with the rocks.

Lay on the floor at the top of the lighthouse.

Peel back the roof and watch the clouds go by, until it is dark.

Remember laughter.

Wait for night to come.

Listen to the sea at night.

Someone would come for me there though.

Come to find me.

Would I open the door.

10

Would I let them in.

How long before they would smash the door down.

How long would it take for them to make my life-theirs.

I look out of the window and know that my life must change but I cannot see around

the corner.

The angle is too short, too obtuse.

Perhaps it is better not to look but to live in darkness.

I have love but do not have life.

Life is lost to me. It is over there and I am firmly here.

I don‟t want to be a better man just the man that I am.

Whoever that is.

A man that can laugh and cry at the same time.

The lonely man, who gets as close to women as he can.

To feel, the life that is the woman.

When I look into a woman‟s eye, I could drop to the ground and hug and grip their

waist.

Please stroke my hair, like my mummy used to do.

Let me curl up on their lap and breasts.

Let me be a child again.

Or maybe a dog.

a dog with a rope for a chain.

So look into my eyes and don‟t be scared what you see there.

It is not sadness or pain it is just me?

But do you really want to look. Why would you.

So if you pass me in the street

don‟t look into those blue eyes because I am not there.

I AM

IN- MY LIGHTHOUSE.

11

TITLE

I try to think about something important to write about.

Love, friendship, sex.

The more I think about it, the less there is to write about.

So, why do I write?

Why does anybody write?

Because they can say words on paper, that they cannot speak.

Too frightened that nobody will listen, held to their words.

All of these, and then some.

Look what they did to Jesus.

I lie in bed and fall asleep hoping and praying I can become the man that I need to be.

When I wake up

I am always in the same place.

Only one thing has changed

I can get up

and search for those important words

that will make a good poem.

I know that they are inside of me

I just need to drag them out.

They will come.

So, I will keep searching but I am unsure as to what will happen if I find them.

I think that I will know before you

But what happens then.

I have stopped writing for pleasure or for me.

I write for you.

Whether you want them

or not.

12


Colin Roberts

5 In London - Rush Hour

Why‟s the train so crowded, dangerous?

Watch the bodies pushing, pulling.

Watch the faces smiling, knowing, quizzing,

Black reflections flying, passing,

5 in London – rush hour

Why‟s our safety ignored, worthless?

Watch the children wondering, slipping.

Watch their parents trying, failing.

Hear their voices crying, moaning.

Why on Earth do these things happen?

5 in London – rush hour.

Different people from different countries,

Different thoughts in rolling tube.

Different fashions, lying mirrors,

No barriers, the world is one.

How do trains knock down life‟s barriers?

Watch the papers rising, falling.

13

See the headlines showing, hiding

5 in London – rush hour.

Ashley Bovan

Whitewell-on-sea

craggy spikes

the ocean throws its smell up into the air

Sploosh sploosh crush crush

Going on and on

Maybe it‟s the nature of timelessness

that in the complete moment

you have all the potential of the future

Odourous time stuck in old cottages

Front-rooms‟ musty

upholstery clutches memories

discards the chance to grow

out of darkness

a green shoot in the open sky

The thuck thuck of your grandfather‟s clock

Children of the White Islands

Tonight, in furtherance,

the star shapes are all wrong

chilly moon

Snow everywhere, conforms to my feet

ice-ants nip

14

I steal fur from dead warriors

In the future

when this 12-year process is over

I will have no need for dreams

but, for now, I should practice an attitude

that will avoid generating suspicion and hostility –

a suitable vulnerability


Colin Beck

Blues

When I look at you

I don‟t know what day it is

Im seeing stars

I don‟t know whats going on

Hold my hand

You see I watch you watching me

Im alive close your eyes

I don‟t know what feelings are

I seen your face in broken glass

Scattered the way I feel

15

Henry Blake

IF YOU CAN AFFORD A DUCK POND AND

PORNO FILMS WHY CAN‟T YOU BUY

YOURSELF A PERSONALITY

The glass screen in my bedroom

Transmits insipid faces

A man who purports to be Prime Minister

Of England has a face like a wet weekend

In Bradford….

He talks out of the corner of his mouth,

Smiles with a glass eye….

Reads out a list of statistics….

Expounds the economy is in great shape,

Unemployment is negligible…. In real terms!

A different man comes onto the screen,

He‟s got a nice hairstyle,

A slimy face….

He states the economy is in melt-down,

Unemployment has reached the highest rate

Since 1990…

This man has 30 million pounds in his

Bank account….

You don‟t acquire that amount of money by

Propagating the virtues of Florence Nightingale.

One of these law abiding individuals is lying….

Probably both.

I switch off the T.V. screen

It‟s a pretend democracy with puppet people

And it‟s bullshit

16

THE DEATH OF A COUNCIL TENANT

He left this world two days ago.

Some people from the refuse department had

Come to collect his things:

Broken furniture, old clothes, esoteric books….

They threw the stuff outside in a skip

With the rest of the rubbish.

He led the life of a complete nobody,

The ending was a quiet commonplace affair.

He died in his sleepfrom a brain haemorrhage.

He used to say to his one and only friend:

“It makes no difference who you are, where you come

from death will be your constant companion.”

He died on Monday,

They buried him on the Friday….

Nobody attended the funeral….

The keys to his council flat

Were passed onto the next potential tenant

A. Catterall

Come Closer Honey

As I left, she threw

My books from the window

Behind me

17

Then she started

With the bottles

After a while

She stopped,

And I stopped

Shouting

She came down

And sat on the pavement

Next to me

And we sat amongst

The books and wine

I rolled a cigarette

And offered her one

She shook her head

And I have nothing else,

To give anymore

I never asked for you,

I never would

There has always

Been this between us

In my drink

I can forget, the sound of you

And it is wonderful,

Wonderful.

18

Why We Wait

We sat playing cards

Because there was

Nothing else to do

And as the power

Ran out, we waited

For dawn

All night I wanted

To touch you,

But didn‟t

You wanted to leave,

But you didn‟t

Neither of us,

Had anywhere to

Go

I‟m just old

And drunk

And you,

You are young

And new

There would be,

No point

There is, no point

Just count the cards

At dawn

19

Then you can leave

And I, will be able,

To sleep


Chris Hardy

THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS

Before me lies the past

a dark pool

the colour of regret,

which I must cross

to where chance

fate and choice

which makes regret

await

concealed in mirrors

on the wall

of a house.

I have to cross over

the pool

carrying the present

in my pocket,

go through the door

look in the mirrors

20

watch the roof

fade

take my hand

from my pocket

and open it.

IRIS

In the dark

she comes up close.

She builds a scaffold

and locks it to my face.

I see her comet

piloting in

she sees the doorway

where the world trades

and scans the shedding

tapestry

that makes a graveyard

souvenir,

lights upon motes

refines the shadows,

says if the litter

rises like a wall

or falls like a curtain

that I must call.

When she watches

I go blind.

21

THE BOOK OF GHOSTS

In the corner of the book-case

against the wall

is the book of ghosts

Open the book

and the dead wake up,

certain they‟re alive,

and apparitions appear

of those who I still meet,

who walk into my house

like people though

they leave themselves

in footfalls down the street.

And in the book

are my ghosts too,

ghosts of me.

When the book is open

we all return

like shadows in the hall

and when the book is shut

we turn our faces once more

to the wall

22


David Hudson

ORIGAMI

Snowflake events

The Paper Men. Yellowing, carious. All vicious angles, impossible geometry. Cut and

pasted from a thousand headlines screaming rape and murder. House security

butchered. Old man Murdock taken to the Printers. Blocks of text hammered into raw

flesh. All the latest news.

Shocking what they‟ll print nowadays.

The CCTV coverage tops the ratings.

Feral media storming the TV studios. A code V situation. Aggressive interviewing.

Paxman stuffed live on Newsnight.

Bonehead and Gobshite, a couple of Irish troubadours, made their fortune fleecing the

punters on the “charity” circuit, forcibly sodomised on stage by a junkyard

synthesizer.

Talk about a critical shafting.

Bad ideoplasms. Egrigor mugshots. The police have taken to using silver bullets. Not

that it does any good.

One umwelt after another.

Mass UFO sightings over rubbish dumps and scrap yards. Pilots attempting intercept

find themselves flying over illusory landscapes. Fading transmissions.

23

Bodies as icons. Built from junk and bad dreams.

A pack of slavering Jabberwocks attack the House Of Commons. Blood and guts

everywhere. It‟s a horrible sight. All those politicians.

A giant octopoid reported surfacing at Greenwich. Strange chants fill the air.

England‟s Dreaming.

Andrew Nightingale

Coming into Canary Wharf on the DLR

Rather than being formal to the point of violence:

fucked up by its mantichoneymoon with dead water,

the rectilinear slurry graves and their brightly coloured boats.

Something homely in the smeared dusk: the yellow lights,

the slackened compulsion after six that eases

the slant rhyme of smart casual, the violence of crowds

cleverly dissipated by clever architectural design.

The sense of companionship it leaves is wrong,

As if a body, disinterred, were found wearing a novelty tie.

Curving in, over cold grey panels of meniscus,

the cathedral‟s candlelight and murmur is nodal,

wedding the purity of financial violence to chic cellular

home lives, echoes of the yellow light, mortgaged

mash-ups in hinterlands of children and pets.

An empty barge, bloated like a corpse: a lost soul, laid up,

going nowhere, floating where the taped voices miss,

the daylight bulbs are blind and there‟s no screen, no login,

only the formalities that follow self-harm,

cubes of stopped river bedding the dead bride‟s dream.

24

Division

1. interphase

Between population growth

and the notion of vermin

among the animals

Between cancer

and treatments for mange

among the falling shadows

Between a live pig’s heart

and unsorted chickens’ eggs

among the undead

2. Prophase

Before the illusion of this-means-that

fire and flint

the logic of forward

Before eating becomes consumption

the village GP in antlers

ceremony pushing forward

Before the shape of a plate as aspiration

bacon and burger

the alien races forward

3. Metaphase

Over hills beyond the inhabited world

worlds inhabited still

something stuck that can’t change

Over the laboratory a studied evasion

beyond the ken of skin or pump of blood

where living material harbours change

25

Over vast self-healing systems of finance

beyond mythic technologies

markets change

4. Anaphase

The right to rape and murder and eat

what reconstructed instincts believe in eating

brings memory back to the hands again

On a straightened back internal organs

no longer hang naturally

next to the same explanation again

Timelessness comes back

to creatures waiting to die

the pre-death that life be lived again

5. Telophase

In the end their end is smothered by difference

dissection of autopsy concludes

there’s no ghost

An end in itself is born outside the species

ending in the fragmentation of species

into a million speckled eggshells

The relationship ends with cytokinesis

so separation exonerates

atrocities of difference Kevin Meehan

Stravisio Beach

Black olive

skinned vendor

you tread daily

lean and barefoot

26

upon the fresh combed

searing sand

into a desert with two oceans

Up and down the mediterranean‟s edge

in a shimmering mirage

persistent as the sun

your sure sole

prints the surface

of a sea of opportunity

slim pack muel

you carry your weight

without complaint

in a variety of hats, hairclips

watches,sunglasses and jewelry

tempter of the tan and naked

sun worshippers

on their backs and bellies

in deck chairs and recliners

your fake designer goods

glint and sparkle

for a purchase

with your carved lizard mirrors, watches, rings

and colourful necklaces

made from teeth and shells

luring the lazing

to sit up and part with some euros.

along the scorched

Sicilian shoreline.

27

Reflections of a Banksman It is summer here in Dublin. We pull on steel and stone in an international effort to raise apartments from a wounded and weeded acre of urban dereliction for the client. Poland, Romania, Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe arrive half asleep to rise perfectly formed concrete columns on a military scale from the wasteground. Hard hatted, hiving, migrant workers graft another marathon of tasks to realize the drawings of an architect‟s plan before the sun sets on the last few hours they own. All are laboured and sore from steel and stone, glass and timber and the daily tread of tired feet upon a changing landscape. Nation by nation join together in The global language of effort. In their midst a tower crane rises

28

one of many that stand like still silent storks in the docklands with outstretched necks of angle iron dangling their chains and hooks to catch the Banksman's straps.

A noisy entanglement of metal and men All are friendly smiling and worn And dream of home


Mel Quetzcoatl

IRAQ

Shrapnel that splinters in one's body The woman crying Soldiers doing their ghost-dancing through Baghdad, the image of The young male, hooded, his crime? Unspecified, the 'enemy combatant' that lurks in the haze of the soldiers' imagination, everywhere but no-where, the Sun parchyed poster of Saddam, crisp, rustling its own demise in the Racous noise of gunshots and the Danger of hospitals, to loive or die? Is there an option? The 'enemy combatant' moves through his dance, in the imagination of the soldiers, the Flowing robes of Bin Laden everywhere but no-where, a two minute hate to justify...what? The eyes of the child movinbg through each ghost-moment, wondering where her father is, the soldier, spitting out his gum and calling in a Foreign language, the Death of a father and two sons at a checkpoint: they couldn't understand English, he Ran a small shop once, but that was the objective of a 'precision strike', the 'enemy combatant' was lurking amongst the cans of beans and stuff, existing through the imagination of the soldiers, the enemy combatant, like some form of Hollywood creation, a matter of culture, a matter of Dancing with the ghosts that stalk Abu gharib, moving through into some Intoxicating swirl, the 'enemy combatant' in each dark corner, existing through some Dream that didn't exist but ws forced into existence, the Imagination of the soldiers and the cry of a thousand orphans....

29

WATER

The sand flow of life And sparkle of dew-wet leaves on the brow of memory... The bird Rising with its song to that blue azure nothingness through which the dreams began to flow... River-like, from their beginnings, the shimmer of blue-moon silver on the waters that Flowed through my dreaming like a song I forgot and then remembered, the Ghost that touched my fiongers, and the elixir of some form of sense that Crept theif-like through my dreams and sung to the Flight we began as children when we held the world in our hands, our world, its heart beating to its history like the Jungle-drumming of some forgotten civilization, its echoes moving stealthily through the Distant horizon where I caught my dream in my hand and danced with her, spiralling through the uNiverse like some Quasar of foretting, each moment, caught within itself and the history that defined it, weaving silk with its movements, existing through the Urban hymn and the roar of cars, the quiet of the forest, intersecting, the motions through which Silently we dance through the hall of dreams, each one beckoning, each one singing its own song and Twirling through history, the dance on the water, droplets between our toes...


Cristogianni Borsella

The Night Breeze

The night breeze

rattles the sound of angry stilettos,

sharp twisted iron coffins

in blue diamond shrouded graveyards.

Have I been here before?

A familiar tone excites me

howling in the wind, ever evasive,

30

just beyond the reach of the living.

Material dust settles in the

corner of my eye

like an abstraction of reality,

twice the size of my ear wax,

but night air is good

heightening my sense of dearth.


Simon Turner


Love is known

There is no qualm invented

that can resist the torrent that builds behind the log-jam of branches and corrugated iron

the plastic roofs and ripped-out fences tangled in weed and filth

all blasted down the gullies once stately

to jam the arched thoroughfare

of bridge to sea

the water rises and courses wider

screaming

you bastards will not stop me

I live in the sea

I will belong in salt and nothing will find me

you will not seek me out and hold ransom

my destruction and doom

I am love-like in my power and mirage

real but aching to be gone

there high to your stone buttresses

then gone to your gull-swooped masses

where I’ll carve my love-names in shore-rock and sand-grain

where I’ll shape pebble and cove

centuries of me you’ll not see

love taught me how

the force can sweep unstopped

how none deny the sight and all must bow to the sight

of how I decide to flow to the loss and the new vaster me


31

will you come too?

or do you hesitate on the parapet

your face lashed by drowning’s lure

aghast at why

devoid of reasoned abandon

and crushed against the absence of the witness

who walked away?



Jonathan Doherty


The Manchester Renaissance

Proper Mancs say: "Shut your North and south!"

divided only by shirt colour

come derby day.

My Manchester ,

built by buildings as big as its heart;

today we’re changing for the better.

We’re not so soft as the cotton made here,

cos we’ve had it mint and we’ve had it hard.

We’ve stood back and watched our mills fall quiet -

that was a revolution in ruin.

A government got its turn with Thatcher.

Eighties’ kids laboured on to gleefully

stick two fingers up at her in the Hac

while they were ‘avin it on pure acid

and mesmerised by ‘A guy called Gerald.’

Lots of cash and drugs have been injected

into Manchester - that’s the way we do it,

and today we are changing for the best.

On our Pennine throne, we are king

and over the northern realm may we reign

til’ those fibreglass cows come home. May we be top, sweet, sorted, sound

til’ that endless rain stops falling, when Leeds is bigger, Liverpool louder,

32

when London finally stops calling. Shout out to Oasis, the Smiths,

Edwards, Bell , Lowry and Turing. Anyone who's who, north or south,

red or the blue, the born and bred and diehards, to the through and through,

and don't forget the adopted few.

To the city that just dozes

in the dense concrete jungle.

A pulsating throb of vibrancy

pounding the labyrinth street.

All resounds and all is colour,

as I view the kaliedescope

of cultures, the fusion of creeds

in the simmering crucible

always toiling, always bubbling.

Pigeons and gothic gargoyles,

and me watch the sun run away,

and my Manchester , yours and ours,

settles under the brewing sky.

And, like applause, the rain slowly

falls down as a crescendo,

harder, faster, as to encore

such a symbol, such a gift.


Mary Ocher

"Proper adjustments' Big blue veins I wish they‟d be any other color but blue But they don‟t care, see - Opposing your wishes they grow and spread and take hostage of the body as it opens, and the blue veins conquer: We have always been" the emperors,

33

We have always ruled this waste-place, and nobody else but us



Simon Hambrook


Snow landscape

A landscape in the ever most airs

brings me here .

Desk of hearts . The hills

white polar arms in the grass fields at my standing feet

will to listen .

But I am a chief of crayons , not nature ,

thunder or these wetted flowers .

I can only find the hearts of memories in my world ,

and tunes which I lifted once can now play

in streams as beautiful as suns .

For I make that those waters

multiply into the sublime

until , Creator – full ,

blushes with their spending radiance .

34


Sarah Woolsey


Recycling

1.House

Domestic shadows

clutter up bookcases,

encased in gold gilt frames,

staining thread-less carpets.

A musty vapour

of damp and paper

unwelcomes

new tenants.

2. Street

Flattened tarmac

fails to suffocate

bursting tree roots. Cracks

zig-zag the sticky surface,

man-made molehills

mount and multiply

mocking that

Nature will prevail.

3. Body

Silvery strands

peep through an auburn bob,

35

tell-tale, glistening.

Under dark camouflaged

ammonia pigment.

Uncoiling, rebellious,

frizzing free

from a backcombed jail.

4. Skin

A dewy ivory mask

emulates a magazine cover.

Poreless, airbrushed

from a distance.

Smiling reunites creases,

creamy filler melting,

flawless finish cracking

like ceramic.


Tom George

My Bohemia I celebrate the overhanging tree that leans out over the wall Of the old abandoned house on Croxteth Road I wonder at its twisted waist, boughs and blossoms hanging down In a drunken sprawl that almost touches the pavement And you have to walk round A shameless and defiant gesture The house behind, repossessed by nature

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With feral fronds sprouting from the eaves And crumbling steps engulfed by infant jungle A forty-something man walks past With six inch turn ups on his jeans A strange bowling walk And the hat and jacket of some long lost youth cult That I can’t identify Off he strides out of sight To somewhere I cannot possibly imagine In L17… On winding roads under maples and oaks I venture out to find Baby castles with turrets and green copper Collared doves on chimney pots And echoes of the chapters I have lived On idle afternoons under milky skies I celebrate the nine doorbells, The creaky floor and the shared bath Skinning up to Syd Barrett Walking round to somewhere With a hat and scarf Dusky gloom and the smell of a bonfire In our idyll I celebrate a draughty letterbox An echoey hallway cluttered with bikes Tattoed sheets at the window The intrigue of attics A mirror from a skip Brompton Avenue glade-like In the dappled day Ghostly and still by night With somewhere, the sound of a party I wonder at the countless lives and times Daydreams and desires That gave this scene its soul

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The unspoken community that meets by chance Walking the shore of Sefton park’s green ocean And rat race refugees like you With hairline cracks Where a light shines through Seeking out the shade of trees The tranquil breeze We understand The mossy walls and magpie calls The mystery of sweet decay I celebrate these things today ‘Cos just last week I saw men looking at the empty house With clip boards, hard hats and plans To tear out the twisted tree that understands To knock through walls And lay Ikea pine floors For boring people To live (if that’s what they call it)... with huge TVs That don’t belong And live it wrong With sci-fi monster vehicles parked outside And security lights on the drive I celebrate the little old man who pushes A home made cart around the streets looking for wire and this and that A radiator or radio Over wet leaves on Ivanhoe A distant figure walking Fading into mist

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Neon Highway

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