Neon Highway ISSN 1476-9867
Issue 2
September 2002
Contents:
David Grubb: two poems: 1/2
A C Evans: three poems/three images: 3/4/5/6
Ken Edwards: poem: 7/8/9
Robert Sheppard: poem: 9-15
Mark Mendoza: poem: 15/16/17
Helen Berry: two poems: 17-22
David Clemson: poem: 22-23
Rupert Loydell: two poems: 23-26
Adrian Clarke: poems: 26/27
Jas Maddock: poem/image: 28/29/30
Alice Lenkiewicz: poem/image: 30/31
Sheila Murphy: poems: 32
Trevor Landers: poem: 33/34
Jim Bennet: poems: 34-36
Matt Fallaize: poem: 36-38
Bill Griffiths: poems: 38-42
Cover image by Jas Maddock
With special thanks to Ken Edwards and Bill Griffiths for contributing towards this issue.
Copyright is retained by the authors
David Grubb
Learning to Fly
My children fall out of the wall into dreams
where flying is the first thing you do. They already
know that this is not possible when we are around. They
also know that some of the animals cannot be mentioned
or it leads to questions, frowns, disbelief and even harm.
In church they see saints doing the fantastic and beasts
wandering between miracles and battles and all the animals
fall down in front of St. Francis when he commands them.
The nearest we get to this is in stories of walls that go for
a walk and zoos where the people are in cages and when the sun
and moon speak in sonata-form. Ballet also gets near to it
but when the adults try too hard you get bad sculpture
and long poems and operas where the small bellowing heads
of ugly females fog-horn rapture above mossy bosoms
and the sight of unicorns makes some of the men cross their legs.
1
OTHER
And when he had hurled himself at the mirror
in an attempt to discover other
we found his two shoes beneath the mirror frame
placed as if he had just exchanged them for boots
and had walked out into the wilds of Dartmoor
to be with the singing stones and the women turned into
trees and the places where children would sometimes be heard singing
and in the letters he had left all of the words had become
birds and his books stank of berries and old orchards.
This being a dream of course so that we may believe
in it. This being a fable so that we can refer to it
and not let the silence hide it, giving his two shoes
to the Oxfam shop, his letter to the zoo and his books
hurled into the compost bin until they were quiet.
This being what we stuff between the prayers and the
orthodoxies and what we wish our children to discover
after the singing detectives have been and made
comments about the size of the mirror, big enough
to swallow a man whole if the truth were told.
2
A.C. Evans
IN EXTREMIS
In my suffering
I looked out of the window
Far blue evening sky of clouds
Lit from below; a flashing, red light
From an aircraft overhead-the scene
Reflects my mind, or
The images in my mind,
Arising- how?
3
In extremis, I feel convulsions
Taking my singular presence
Beyond, or among, the clouds above.
So-in this uncertain space where
A cold, burning mist shrouds
The remains of ancient buildings
Abandoned carcasses scattered
Across scrubland hillside, rising to a
Monumental crown of stones
Standing motionless in time,
I see that I am dying-slowly,
And in pain.
I also see, with another sense,
A white, slender figure approaching.
Perhaps we can talk,
Is it possible
That, without words, there is, at last,
An answer?
But no-I hesitate-and
Quietly, the figure passes into shadow.
Everything fades slowly from my sight
As, without a sound, I drift
Into oblivion-into darkness.
4
WAITING HERE
Images of star death.
Polished flooring, waiting,
I’m waiting - jazz music – impressions,
Mistaken impressions – Elektra, still
Waiting, child’s voice, silhouette,
Figures – plate glass vistas-all
Around me, while I wait, here,
Still-and outside the hothouse,
Not my time, light-bird waiting
Here sleepmask cool, the sky
Reflected-no, I am…waiting
5
LOOP DECAY
1. Dawning Sickness
Legend-time-love-remorse
Endless-loop-loop decay
Endgame-future-memorial-hope
Deny-time-love-decay
2. Death Inventory
Comprehension tonal-trial-black
Ignorance-ecstasy-life-decay
Help-smile-deny-endless loop
Legend – endgame – time-decay
3. Loop Alarm
Away-thought-remains-remorse
Help-time-legend-decay
Save-deny-alarm-loop
Endless-future-love-decay
4. Picturesque Concordance
Dust – ecstasy – mem-orial – hope
Past – l e g e n d – decay
Sa…ve…(deny – alarm – lo-
-op – t I m e – remain – fall…ing – d e c a y
5. Sick Decay
Unkn-ow-n…) remain – hope – endless
Loop – loop – d e c a y…ing
…unknown…u n k n o w…n…///
]legend – love – re-mor-se-
6
Ken Edwards
Four poems from Eight+ Six (from a much longer sequence consisting of 98 poems due to be published as a book)
THEY DIDN’T GO HOME
The poets and their entourages, appendages,
Readerships, theoretical props and absences
Are variously and severally assembled.
A shows pictures and reads the words.
B takes seriously the notations in cowboy comic balloons
C vacillates, and comes down on the side of externality
D demonstrates conviviality (again).
E emphasises the smallness of the audience.
F is quiet and has with him a pair of roller blades
G, as usual, enigmatic.
H waxes shaven.
I have had my hair newly cut but have forgotten about it.
Sound travels from the street below because it is a warm
Night & there is no reason for folks to go home.
THE POETS GATHER
(Theory of poetry 2)
The poets gather. They, like poetry itself,
want to be, not seem. Which is seemly.
These are their stories, and the summation
of them is this: that they reject story.
Why, they are paralytic with joy: on their plastic chairs
they identify the depth of field of such paradoxes
and exult in it – they presuppose no need
for emotional closure.
That was then. And now?
Well, only you & I are left, and we’re engaged
In refutation. Yours is a pint of bitter,
mine’s a Guinness. This proposition is true. We raise
our glasses, we refute it
and refute again.
SHIFTS GENRE OFTEN
The poet is one who commits
acts of barbarism out of
social urgency. She babbles
and is a rejection of the
language of. She keeps the context
problematic, pivots as often
as possible, which permits
the tide. This is kind of lingo
phrase for those sorts of people lost
in “the water of the river”
when the water is the river.
Its maps are metamorphic not
atemporal, a comedy of
metonymic chains, of logics
*For Lyn Hejinian, some of whose presentation in the King’s Talks series, King’s College London, April 1998, I have paraphrased freely here.
BECOME GEMS HERE
The map has got scrambled & we are all
delighted. My foot is ambiguous, it has
locationality but not
positionality. Don’t stop. “Those useful choreographies
can easily become a baleful aerobic”* and
once the stultifiers have a hex on warp agencies
who knows where it’ll end up?
But I am certain of a noble uncertainty, it’s OK
now I see that you in your way
radiate and this is legal & good
And everyone says you got the look
of the artist formerly known as god.
We are conversant with our glorious plangent mess
gazing rapidly past this which into here
• The quotation is attributed to Chris Cheek in New Hampshire, September 1996
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31 Basalt Wind-chimes for the Window-Box of Earthly Pleasures
The End of the Twentieth Century 2
Implosive Samples 2
Human Dust 5
Twentieth Century Blues 64
O
Not a book of ayres not a solid monotone. An eye. An ear. Willed to pleasure, let's take a note for a walk across the humming strings. Human
O
Human dust on which history overdosed twice (at least) in one century
O
This dance means bumping into things, yet jump back from the path of Creation's clockwork
O
Atheism does not exist because god invented it! A force to vent: Velopoesis
O
A single voice on a single page - there's music enough. The newspaper vendor cries: ‘Echo ... Echo
O
Plonk (see plunk); his rush of pleasure haunts the paths of sense with sensation
O
But that spooky charm is not earthly goodness as one would want to know it!
O
The fat, melting, dissipates more energy than it conserves. As does repeating the spiky line that unravels into a force larger than its parts
O
‘There ain't no way they can replace this vacuum I created in human history
O
The discipline of hazard and high quality shoots aloft the victims' pitiable admiration that builds under the crust of pain while Creation adjusts its ancient braces
O
The Author of Bangs, against which we nuzzle the footnote of something like human justice. If he is condemned to time, push the eye out and climb out, as from a shell into the bright dream of tomorrow. Obtain your liberty and fiery scope, a phoenix of ‘Socio-Pleasurableness’!
O
Routes bloomed across bound wastes: up to off and over and out until they feel like jelly: ‘Your faire lookes enflame
O
A sensation that is almost an emotion an aubade an algorithmic simulation
O
(a vacuum
O
Suck parody? Constituents of pleasure are not to be taken for granted
O
(sings:) Dear, if you change, I'll melt away like lard!
O
Jaunty now, where the lyrics are dainty. Its opposite, in semantic counterpoint, a miraculous parliament!
O
Keep Creation dramatic and didactic, that's the trick! Each single eye is plugged tight with transformations
O
The strange persistence of the meanings of certain words through centuries. Which syllable shall we elongate to quench again with love?
O
The right to pleasure, as under statute. A unit of pleasure, its animus (Who needs devils with gods like that?
O
Born again, to free Poetic Fury? Dust caught in bees' wax. Turn your lamp up in unbelief. Pleasure has no balance
O
to catch the almost-involuntary spurt of semen or the spiritualist who contacted Bradlaugh after death to catch his confession! Weightless epiphanies
O
‘Shine him off that window!’ This goes with saying
O
Who said purity wove their words, advertising just one admired synthesis?
O
Has an oath truer currency for being underwritten by fear and by stone-eyed defenders of monuments? Cease to be pleasuring response is lost until it sings far from a said
O
Shifting rime that easie flatterer a cat chasing a fly
O
Pleasure's twin. Standing by his word, a god of flesh she forms
O
Clocking form, the infectious eye catches pleasure being caused. The unhasty song when responsibility descants as response
O
The sigh of a cosmos, cooling, expanding; the resurrection of an idea of the word as
O
Unseal the lid at last! A chamber of twentieth century echoes rings. Soiled prose-songs of Velopolis
June 1999
Robert Sheppard
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Mendoza
fringe saddles
unsaturated
student disaster oils rated/reacted
from the smeared throne exchange heat
system freezers firmly- the compost
surface scrolled fingers reduce & protract the pie
induction in this matter unusually absent
investiture harbours
herbivore grades blest
professions or social shorts
profoundly refunded
tune general tardy
demand smoke
function pull off
with traveller’s joy/ a child of 7 years needs
testa splits) to bury for nothing:
46firsts.com
place & appliance a-
greed with the employer
in funding the deep fringe saddles as follows:
1) production of the Basidium Nexus Plan (BNP)
2) deamination of isolate force-pump & graft
3) storage of cupped garden soil will do- essence
of yellow torch; &
4) regulation of the chromolume in plundering
equation of the last
items ad valorem advert expenditure
whereabouts & come smaller
assigned a fiscal place in a tokonoma rivulets
& droplets react
without throat rate
looking like homozygous
or vestigial wings war
on worthwhile
wear on any cut godwottery
not yet raised to a yodel
multiple asset tubers
& polythene side-lines sovereign clap
largely backward or handicapped for the secular
chambr´e at the momentary canal they turn
thyme-eaters to credit
“dust yourself off there
let alphas decide weather a headlong stop-gap
or warped flax engine will cross inert phenotype
suicide in the same
ludic counters to a prejudice
chin up” you can wig out
if you wag trails
-----------------------------------------------------------
Helen Berry
THE TASTE OF THE ONION
OUR nation is at WAR
OUR ECONOMY is in RECESSION
The civilised world F
A
C
E
S UNPRECEDENTED DANGERS
YET
THE STATE OF OUR UNION
HAS NEVER BEEN STRONGER
OUR NATION HAS
CAPTURED
ARRESTED
AND RID
THE WORLD OF THOUSANDS
OF TERRORISTS
SAVED A PEOPLE
FROM STARVATION
FREED A COUNTRY
FROM BRUTAL OPPRESSION
A $$$ BILLION DOLLARS $$$ A MONTH
TODAY * * * *
WOMEN * * * *
ARE * * *
FREE
OUR PROGRESS IS A TRIBUTE TO THE
MIGHT
OF
THE UNITED STATES MILITARY
(THEY) HAVE DELIVERED
A MESSAGE
YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE
THE JUSTICE
OF THIS NATION
SEMPER FI MY LOVE
OUR CAUSE IS JUST
TENS OF THOUSANDS
OF
DANGEROUS KILLERS
SCHOOLED
IN THE METHODS
OF
MURDER
THE MEN AND
WOMEN
OF
OUR
ARMED FORCES
SPREAD
THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD
LIKE
TICKING
TIME BOMBS
SET
TO GO
OFF
WITHOUT
WARNING
AMERICA IS ACTING
AMERICA AND AFGHANISTAN ARE NOW ALLIES
LET’S PASS A STIMULUS PACKAGE
Girl from Ipanema
Carnival carnivore casting worms
Jewelled watch, sleek chic bait
A gluttonous feast of flesh
pretty,
preened
and primed await
Metre high plumes on glittering crowns
Fandango frippery
Fringing flickery
Hormones transported in
sweaty rivulets
Amazon rivers coursing
Maraca beads
swirling white noise
Tom-tom pacing
pelvic thrust
Native rhythms evoke
lustful swelling
Wave pulses to the edge
Hairs twitch
In-breath
held
waiting
Heartbeat re-sounds
throb
Crescendo approaches
Pace quickens
Pupils dilate
Flesh judders
Globs trickling over
glistening skin
pulled
translucent
Precocious gutter child
re-turned
Chicken bones
line
the Street
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Clemson
Before reconstruction
Horsetails whipped by the hot wind
as the crocodiles scrape their scales
against the dead oaks
blistered by the Sun
desiccated statues of forgotten shade.
Brown-eyed deer flicker
through the tall golden grasses
laden with fat ticks,
scenting the water,
fearing to drink
under the lion’s, snarl
over the dead lambs.
While pink, grey and green
lampreys suck the life from
the great salmon as they
lie in the gravid beds.
All must come to this course?
This Eden where the key
is jammed in the lock.
Overwound climate?
Broken Spring?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rupert Loydell
HOUSE OF GLOOM
I flew home each night from wherever I had been
To watch my father die, slept on the floor beside him.
Colours bleached out while I was away, everything
turned to brown: ochre, tawny, mustard, spice.
Death continued about its secret business;
no-one ever spoke about what was going on.
Stumps of bushes are sending up shoots,
Often in the form of prophecy or story.
No-one listens. I am somewhere else by now,
at a standstill. Waiting for Dad to arrive.
I must stop turning to see if he is following,
must learn to speak in the past tense.
Only the hardiest can stand the present;
I do not understand the word memory.
At the bottom of my heart it is proven:
melancholy makes everything right.
Turn on the light and play music til daybreak;
Loss must be burnt into the world.
My father is now cross-referenced,
a man no longer in the public domain.
‘Don’t pull that innocent routine on me’
is something he once might have said.
I twitch and fidget, pace the field;
he zips and flickers through the world.
River of Breath
Already, I know
some of my clothes
will outlast me;
and that there won’t
be time to read my books
or hear my CDs again.
Past and future
stretch tight between
loss and promise,
an intersection
where topography
becomes narrative:
a dangerous turn,
hills, bridges, towers,
an underpass
all possible routes
through the woods
to where clear skies
and rivers wait.
We have drifted away
from the moment…
I wish for nothing
to change, should
probably worry more
as ambition slips
out of sight. Time
is not my property,
the end of the work
is in view. I snuggle
into a tent of words.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Clarke
from Skeleton Sonnets
the age
of what
to input
profiles idem
a fleur
not inflated
full face
in your
one step
from the
edge pretty
as a
puncture’s high
pitched collapse
“Who will ever read these slips…?”
Li ho (trans J.D. Frodsham)
tips windswept
neglect stirs
a flicker
within silk
sheathed speckling
leaves illegible
pits beetle
drilled piecemeal
deliver the
insinuative image
scenting drizzle
spirits twitter
a relict
bled script
Jas G. Maddock
I USED TO FEEL INTENSE IN MY DEFENCE OF MY DIFFERENCE- NOW I’M COMPLETELY INDIFFERENT. A study of dreams…
I met two floral decked boys on the way to nowhere
They greeted me with a bow and a shower of fragrance
Shrank to the size of small and crept inside my eyes
Stayed there beautiful and danced until I died
If you look closely at things far off you mistake them
Splendorous pretty youths bedecked in dazzled flowers
Asters, camilias, dahlias, passiflora purple divinity boys
Then as they draw nearer the magic sours
Rotten carcass pickled sickly malicious men and women
Smell of burnt flesh and goats, dressed in the same coats
All humans are covered in boring skin and inside are boring bones
Corpuscles, muscles, kidneys: heartless marauding drones.
I believe in nothing, I live out my lifeless days dazed
But a tiny pinhole of a crack screams out inside of me
Not very loud of course, cracks cannot shout very loud
That I must carry on drained, pained and maimed emotionally.
I dream of bees, of wasps with cigarettes in their arses
In pink lipstick rooms with strange men by white windows
I dream of mazes and of running feared I feel the beads of sweat
Palpitating excruciating; the scare from which I froze
I see men with teeth like waylaid graveyard tombstones charred
Walking silent; prowling, the growling; it might be their empty stomach
But they might just growl as that’s what weird men are supposed to do
To scare young maidens and princes and leave them wary and flummoxed.
I hear my name called over the waves of the sea by the beach
Echoing, dancing over the fresh, white, salty foaming milk
The mermaids and men protect me from the human scurf
Pox-like and wormy they spread disaster from old age to birth
The birds talk their bird language all full of mystery and riddle
Provide a kind of company and punctuate the silent nothing
I listen and strain to make sense of the twittery flittery
But after a while it gets me feeling a bit jittery.
I block out the sounds of the past in my present head
Threatening to take me over and pull me fully back into pain
I think of golden boys, winged and fragrant with dark hair
They fight to banish the morbid memories, of more I will gain
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alice Lenkiewicz
milieu
now she’s back again
inside the illusion
preferred this time
maybe you should persuade me
that insects fly
all i see is the earth move in waves
when this is over
will you consider me or
will it change
something vacant
blue glass blue snow
something perhaps
another random ricochet
…so we lit some cigarettes
kissed
despised each other
laughed
walked our separate ways
in-between artificial displays
of glass fish
transparent gaping heads
one or two reflections
i gave the visitor directions
yes over there
then watched her search her bag
as they played that song
… thought I was someone good
she still couldn’t find what she was
looking for
put her hand over her mouth
31
Sheila Murphy
Aggravated Asphalt
Time and against the granular induction chevrons placed their amber laves where
Chipped rock seemed intact. For all practical precipice, there seemed a comely
Avenue to fake. Tensions modestly enveloped see-through evanescence. Mainly
From the spun confronting shack presiding near the temples. Brains [dry] before
Beauty. Age is the retort by vitamins, the lock of pear, the whole meal caveats that
Lank into comportment. The coronary altar cloth ′eclairs that any mandible will
Do. Maintained by birds of prey still skivvy although posthumous. That might fray
Semblances before the bake themselves into a twist. This rightly shakes the
Veered foundations into mountable renewals. Plagues come back to haunt what
They have taunted once. And then the sway, the showplace and the cult.
Pronouncing the death sentence in a nice way, the surface as altimeter
Nary a Ration
She kept using the word natural. I was very tired. The afternoon seemed to have
Shelved energy that might have been within the spigot and eventually fallen into
Use. I could not hear the altar in her humdrum range of motion. Tentacles were
Aching to give back to Morse Code tincture of a ravishing and soon-to-be
Announced young fact. The mercy of this wish waltz was its semblance to the
Known. A welding class would have fortified. Likewise, a modest sum of clash.
The penury in which her limbs were steeped made soak time seem inanimate.
Then the worry of the free, the timber out in back, the mere thought of a coast.
These intrepid shoulder-length reflections on a dish of vindaloo were nearly posh
Compared with petty actuals that graced the nearby boulders. All one would have
Wanted was surprise to be indicative of rest. But this seemed creviced with
Invasion. While telling the tale, one reminisces brilliantly until the headrest won’t
Include the dromedary motion sickness one considers as an antidote to a learned
Severity.
Roan latitude, a vague sense of the nest alongside promises
Trevor Landers
House on Oeo Road
Paint runs from cracks in the ceiling
as if the room were wounded –
This body, and we inside.
perhaps it is running
from a spear-pierce into our own
visional vision.
Where words and burgeoning
shapes fail
The birth of painting is reflected
From color above the ceiling.
the black backing shows through
where a mirror has been partly shattered –
scalloped edges of glass fallen away,
so that there is a central
sculptural night
surrounded by the day lit
reflection of trees
that sway
at the edge of the anxious mind.
In fine heat
two images flash,
one into the other:
a ceiling of painted stars, pale-blue fluorescence
and an unkempt lawn,
glistening
from a recent rain.
By the curve of the earth
night’s depth is amplified
as from the sill
of a bay window from the house, on Oeo Road.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bennet
City of Culture
start on bricks
add the people - the I who have
then I who have nothing
there is something
see if a people see
looking for a city's strength
looking good
trivialised
because trivialise is in the viewpoint
see the city of us
Liverpool
we work writing
human for ourselves
and of pieces a side of a face
a face of subsistence
of where the desperate
bring misery
so you mostly take on
the form of squalor
shut sad as if ashamed
Liverpool while first aside
accept reflection
a struggle in diversity
raise another state
at stake the state
that inhabits kindly
but I and us have
no direction home
lost because
people lost hope
turn don't position
don't do snapshots
one shot failure
write of the problems
the homeless
protect people
create underclass
what is not should be
the Liverpool that is
who writes of the system
and worth of city
cries for Liverpool
everyone from people
drug foisted everywhere
history induced
and who is history
it's crap money but it happens
need your eyes and everywhere
talking only of architecture
banks own the wit
we have been the way of poverty
suffering people
living think say
what this picture is
Liverpool
city of culture
__________________________________
when the cold wind blows
there are places we go
in the southern end of town
where decaying ships
rust out a wasteland
we walk back alleys
the weather against us
hands with woollen socks for gloves
coat collar turned against the wind
this is the reality
the crackling
ark cutting
weld flashing night
and here we rut
bum fuck the future
and cry sometimes
yes cry
when cold winds blow
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Fallaize
Ad-Ban
Took the colours emphasised, looking changes
into the mathematician, invariant climbs eight
to the schemers, where, believing sunlight made
separate perception dream burning myself.
Beneath next, a gate, hinged white singularity,
a quicksilver should, better surround the
objectification, smothering the improvisation.
The super-structure examined, type fixed.
Clarity sighs into realising peripheral, glanced, indefinite euphony
until analytic dropped, shifted, lowered, pushed
over reflex record.
Recollection: lying in a eucalyptus, the gravity opposes the lot.
Water to our walkway, scattered sonata co-operatively subsiding.
The trumpet rolls
hits
and one wall blows. Rush the damage.
Your black fingers roll temporal air and the
force felt increases. The shared hole,
the switch.
37
Two, three, carry two. Face dancing visitors, see
the stationary shadows, under a field
calls out, exhausted. The untimed unified uses
signify filling, exhaling in the between so hurts.
Balcony shatters, erupted windows. A walkway
where fire, the fact, came. We wanted retrenching, the open
through telephone-cross. Listen. Wings before resistance
the functions fraught without possible
following drops and background, in noting glass colour.
Broke, the congruent roof. Bird wood. Silence. Haywire.
Began once, precise the start. I,
knowing, upright
just steel, run the directions, the market,
incapable curve, jerk. From notions before
Perfect you. The shoulder circular, just
passing your moving: poetry.
It takes it’s surprises, it takes changing a rebound
labelled “unattended”, marked “decay”. The eye
with a shouting someone calls physically, the walkway
with tearing, the energy of the distance.
Silence, a doubt passes, regarding discarded zero
Sighs in his page, eyes vigorously drawn. The crossing,
knowing anger. Momentarily in blazes, his bright sirens
in the inescapable reflections call the dust.
The utility sends winter to the alternations on the imagined,
realised sword, and the price.
Dancing down in turning digits, a Fireman in
unliquidated blank-screened yesterday necessity.
To the weather, and a history.
Lovely light, the sky strictly duplexed
with the freedom, measured down their wheels.
A torch, light circumvents description. My
time in each moment marks still potent, unbroken. But you
become another arrangement. I, my uneven changes moves
it selectively. Self-love flattered a new folded past, sprays the
pepper- my pillow perception.
The notes are gone. Clean the sign. Beware the distance.
Accompanied sighs secretes cloves. My somersault flurry
hit the city, opens on where it’s hesitant sound launch, say
our distance was copied. Value for reality, simply the
disturbing violins. Watch, fixed, the cordon from distance.
I, outside. One desire, with glass.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Griffiths
BEE-BIKE
For unto us
we are sluggish
in honey-diesel
a chamber a six-facet fruit-transparent
SLIF SLIF SLIF
beat and a
BUMB BUMB BUMB
finding we are unemployed again
slif at a shiny rim of wax
float
booling boon and hint
no Royce no north no land-fill
extra-ordinary
revolve
and but a tiny tube of living contact for passage
pleases like low-apple syrup
rods of flavour
shook to lemon dust
slight sips fat-water
in fret-strut
solid burgher
but glow-in-home a lamp
of wings
and will we see Mother?
the wall
of slow soapstone
rice-glum hinting light
what these mysterious barricades
I eat
I emancipate
wing-leg
arm-head
leached in the rain
of loose liquid food our
first bath
or
euphoric
deep-root
plum
a-rotted snort pip
a fellow hum
to preen
crawl explore
foot each-over
the melody today is ‘Dargomel’
the chant
a tumbled walk
for we are to pay our respects
and the Queen
roseate and bile
love-fur fire channel of
mill of the loving she-workers
and we too shine
gold and global
rasp-castle rigs
on leg
a rude mark
we wake to
as prussic glamour
stripe
a grow, crèche
glow to growl
they shake
sting
SPIDER MAN
long
bus-stop
man maybe
shiny as new
only the dull plaques
sockets
if you glance, catch a glance
stands perch-rigid
preternatural thin, long
still-stannary pipe-crunch clamp-hog-teeth
hidden
How!
After a familiar while,
an elegant leg
seems to almost shuffle
a beginning of a little dance
(I do not know what---
Galliard? Bootlegger Shimmy? Country Jig?)
lop-sided
A terrific burst
Rustle and rush up to,
tear away from
bald beserk aggression against a nearby sky-wall
up and up
we say, “Oh no! he’ll fall!”
But slapstick-stylish
then he rives his shirt open
and SPINS
something to web him to safety
that gluey confusion of middle
(waving, behaving, saving)
all because of the bus
well, we run
well, he knows
Spider-woman is inside
acrid
svelt
snaky-necked
she rides
and her neat bundles beside her
Publications
Ken Edwards: Poems published here are from a forthcoming collection: Eight + Six
Sheila E. Murphy: Most recent book-length collection is from Stride Press, titled THE STUTTERING OF WINGS (2002).
AC. Evans: Forthcoming collection of poems from Via Dolorosa Press.
Cory Harding: memories of air: Collection of poems and images.
Robert Sheppard; Patricia Farrell: The Blickensderfer Punch: Ship of Fools 2002
Fucking Time; six songs for the Earl of Rochester: Ship of Fools
Robert Sheppard: the necessity of poetics: ship of fools, Liverpool, 2002
Journals
The Radiator: a journal of contemporary poetics. Editor. Scott Thurston.
Oasis: Edited by Ian Robinson and Yann Lovelock.
The Paper: Editor: David Kennedy.
The Journal: Editor: Sam Smith.
Gallery: COLLECT in Liverpool
Art Exhibitions
49, Lark Lane, Liverpool.
http://home.btconnect.com/collectgallery
43
Contributors
Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent book-length collection is from Stride Press, titled THE STUTTERING OF WINGS (2002). Murphy’s work appears widely in literary presses. Her home is in Phoenix, Arizona, where she and Beverly Carver founded and coordinated the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series for twelve years.
Robert Sheppard has now completed his long project Twentieth Century Blues. The most recent parts published were Empty Diaries, Stride, 1998, and The End of the Twentieth Century, Ship of Fools, 2002. Senior Lecturer in Writing and English at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, he has also published widely on contemporary poetry and on the discourse of poetics.
Ken Edwards was born in 1950 and lives in London, where he works
as a journalist. He is currently editorial director of Reality Street Editions. His own publications include: Intensive Care (1986), Good Science (1992), 3,600 Weekends (1993) (collections of poetry); Futures (1998) (novel). The poems published here are from a forthcoming collection: Eight + Six.
David H W Grubb. B. 1941. Poems and prose published in UK, USA and Austria. THE MEMORY OF ROOMS (new & selected) published by STRIDE last year. New collection due in 2003 as well as a novel.
Helen Berry: Has worked as a systems engineer and business analyst. Currently on the MA Writing course at Edge Hill University College. Interested in Drama and Poetry.
Matt Fallaize: Lives, works and writes in Ormskirk, Lancashire. An MA graduate, he is a member of the Poetry and Poetics research group at Edge Hill University College, where he is in constant fear of being found out for the chancer that he clearly is.
Alice Lenkiewicz: Artist/Poet. Brought up in Plymouth. Presently lives in Skelmersdale where she is studying her MA in Writing Studies and editing Neon Highway. Published in Fire and Smoke.
Mark Mendoza celebrated his twenty-second birthday with a one-man Mariachi band in a cactus garden close to Brighton and Hove. He is currently writing the critical autobiography Finder’s Keepers: The Life and Work of Aaron ‘The Animal’ Gill. Network information and material
containing the words ‘host’ and ‘explosive’ may be forwarded to markmendoza64@hotmail.com.
Jasmine G Maddock: A surreal, imaginative and quirky artist/writer. Graduated in 1996 from John Moores University in Literature. Has undertaken a cornucopia of art/poetic work, including work selected for unesco. it (poetry) in 2001, poetry in ‘Twisted Shadows’, out now from ‘Spotlight Poets’, winning the society of All Artists (SAA) 2000 Experimental Professional section with ‘Manwoman’ and work on www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/j/jasmine.
Trevor Landers is a Lecturer in Communication at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Trevor’s recent publications are in Never Bury Poetry, Poetic Hours, Pierian Springs and The Voice of the Turtle. He is currently reading the lesser known books of the French surrealist author, George Bataille, and intends to write an academic paper on them.
Jim Bennett is a writer, poet and lecturer, who is married with six children and living in Merseyside (UK). He has over forty books published, covering many subjects including, transport studies, marketing and poetry. He is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool where he delivers courses on such diverse subjects as, travel writing, science fiction, journalism, and other aspects of creative writing.
Down in Liverpool. A new CD of Music and Poetry from. Jim Bennett. "an authentic voice bringing the sound of beat to Liverpool" http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/
David Clemson was a teacher and University lecturer in mathematics, science and education. He now makes his living from writing mathematics and science books. All of his previous experience and qualifications have been in mathematics and science. David is now taking the MA in Writing Studies at Edge Hill and having the most exciting time discovering new things about himself.
Rupert M. Loydell’s writing has appeared in hundreds of magazines in the UK, Europe and America; in many anthologies; and in several solo collections. New work was recently commissioned by the Bath Literature Festival, Devon Arts In Schools Initiative (DAISI) and by Exeter Health Care Arts. Rupert Loydell is Managing Editor of Stride Publications, which he founded in 1982. He also edits the associated Stride magazine-now an online journal at www.stridemagazine.co.uk
Adrian Clarke’s collections include “Ghost Measures” (Actual size, 1987), and “Obscure Disasters”, “Millennial Shades & Three Papers” and “Paradise Gardens” (all Writers Forum). Work anthologised in “verbi visi voco” (Writers Forum, 1992) and “foil” (Etruscan Books, 2000). He co-edited four issues of “Angel Exhaust” during its two incarnations, and “Floating Capital:new poets from London” (Potes & Poets Press, 1991) with Robert Sheppard. He currently edits “And” with Bob Cobbing.
A.C. Evans
Born in Hampton Court in 1949, A.C Evans lived in South London until 1963 when he moved to Essex. Moving back to London in 1973, he currently lives in Mortlake, near Richmond. His artistic activities include both poetry and visual art. His drawings, collages, reviews, articles, translations, poetry and poetic fictions have appeared in numerous magazines including Stride, Fire, Fisheye, Cold Print, Memes, Penny Dreadful, Angel Exhaust and Terrible Work.
Bill Griffiths
Bill Griffiths, born Middlesex 1948, now living in Seaham, Co.Durham. Mixed career, from odd jobs to poetry publishing to studying Old English to (currently) dialect research with the Centre for Northern Studies, Northumbria University. Poetry first published in Poetry Review, 1972 (when edited by Eric Mottram) and subsequently booklets from Writers Forum (Bob Cobbing) and many other little presses. Recent publications: A book of spilt cities (Etruscan Books), Ushabtis (Talus Editions), Durham & other sequences (West House Books).
NEON HIGHWAY. POETRY / ART MAGAZINE
Neon Highway publishes, poetry, poetics, art, reviews and letters.
Subscription
U.K: 4 issues. £7
single issue. £2
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1 issue. 4 euros
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(All international money orders to be paid in pound sterling)
Submissions sent to the editor:
Alice Lenkiewicz
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Lancashire
WN8 9JP
(cheques made to Alice Lenkiewicz)
All artwork in black and white.
Originals not necessary.
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Issue 2
September 2002
Contents:
David Grubb: two poems: 1/2
A C Evans: three poems/three images: 3/4/5/6
Ken Edwards: poem: 7/8/9
Robert Sheppard: poem: 9-15
Mark Mendoza: poem: 15/16/17
Helen Berry: two poems: 17-22
David Clemson: poem: 22-23
Rupert Loydell: two poems: 23-26
Adrian Clarke: poems: 26/27
Jas Maddock: poem/image: 28/29/30
Alice Lenkiewicz: poem/image: 30/31
Sheila Murphy: poems: 32
Trevor Landers: poem: 33/34
Jim Bennet: poems: 34-36
Matt Fallaize: poem: 36-38
Bill Griffiths: poems: 38-42
Cover image by Jas Maddock
With special thanks to Ken Edwards and Bill Griffiths for contributing towards this issue.
Copyright is retained by the authors
David Grubb
Learning to Fly
My children fall out of the wall into dreams
where flying is the first thing you do. They already
know that this is not possible when we are around. They
also know that some of the animals cannot be mentioned
or it leads to questions, frowns, disbelief and even harm.
In church they see saints doing the fantastic and beasts
wandering between miracles and battles and all the animals
fall down in front of St. Francis when he commands them.
The nearest we get to this is in stories of walls that go for
a walk and zoos where the people are in cages and when the sun
and moon speak in sonata-form. Ballet also gets near to it
but when the adults try too hard you get bad sculpture
and long poems and operas where the small bellowing heads
of ugly females fog-horn rapture above mossy bosoms
and the sight of unicorns makes some of the men cross their legs.
1
OTHER
And when he had hurled himself at the mirror
in an attempt to discover other
we found his two shoes beneath the mirror frame
placed as if he had just exchanged them for boots
and had walked out into the wilds of Dartmoor
to be with the singing stones and the women turned into
trees and the places where children would sometimes be heard singing
and in the letters he had left all of the words had become
birds and his books stank of berries and old orchards.
This being a dream of course so that we may believe
in it. This being a fable so that we can refer to it
and not let the silence hide it, giving his two shoes
to the Oxfam shop, his letter to the zoo and his books
hurled into the compost bin until they were quiet.
This being what we stuff between the prayers and the
orthodoxies and what we wish our children to discover
after the singing detectives have been and made
comments about the size of the mirror, big enough
to swallow a man whole if the truth were told.
2
A.C. Evans
IN EXTREMIS
In my suffering
I looked out of the window
Far blue evening sky of clouds
Lit from below; a flashing, red light
From an aircraft overhead-the scene
Reflects my mind, or
The images in my mind,
Arising- how?
3
In extremis, I feel convulsions
Taking my singular presence
Beyond, or among, the clouds above.
So-in this uncertain space where
A cold, burning mist shrouds
The remains of ancient buildings
Abandoned carcasses scattered
Across scrubland hillside, rising to a
Monumental crown of stones
Standing motionless in time,
I see that I am dying-slowly,
And in pain.
I also see, with another sense,
A white, slender figure approaching.
Perhaps we can talk,
Is it possible
That, without words, there is, at last,
An answer?
But no-I hesitate-and
Quietly, the figure passes into shadow.
Everything fades slowly from my sight
As, without a sound, I drift
Into oblivion-into darkness.
4
WAITING HERE
Images of star death.
Polished flooring, waiting,
I’m waiting - jazz music – impressions,
Mistaken impressions – Elektra, still
Waiting, child’s voice, silhouette,
Figures – plate glass vistas-all
Around me, while I wait, here,
Still-and outside the hothouse,
Not my time, light-bird waiting
Here sleepmask cool, the sky
Reflected-no, I am…waiting
5
LOOP DECAY
1. Dawning Sickness
Legend-time-love-remorse
Endless-loop-loop decay
Endgame-future-memorial-hope
Deny-time-love-decay
2. Death Inventory
Comprehension tonal-trial-black
Ignorance-ecstasy-life-decay
Help-smile-deny-endless loop
Legend – endgame – time-decay
3. Loop Alarm
Away-thought-remains-remorse
Help-time-legend-decay
Save-deny-alarm-loop
Endless-future-love-decay
4. Picturesque Concordance
Dust – ecstasy – mem-orial – hope
Past – l e g e n d – decay
Sa…ve…(deny – alarm – lo-
-op – t I m e – remain – fall…ing – d e c a y
5. Sick Decay
Unkn-ow-n…) remain – hope – endless
Loop – loop – d e c a y…ing
…unknown…u n k n o w…n…///
]legend – love – re-mor-se-
6
Ken Edwards
Four poems from Eight+ Six (from a much longer sequence consisting of 98 poems due to be published as a book)
THEY DIDN’T GO HOME
The poets and their entourages, appendages,
Readerships, theoretical props and absences
Are variously and severally assembled.
A shows pictures and reads the words.
B takes seriously the notations in cowboy comic balloons
C vacillates, and comes down on the side of externality
D demonstrates conviviality (again).
E emphasises the smallness of the audience.
F is quiet and has with him a pair of roller blades
G, as usual, enigmatic.
H waxes shaven.
I have had my hair newly cut but have forgotten about it.
Sound travels from the street below because it is a warm
Night & there is no reason for folks to go home.
THE POETS GATHER
(Theory of poetry 2)
The poets gather. They, like poetry itself,
want to be, not seem. Which is seemly.
These are their stories, and the summation
of them is this: that they reject story.
Why, they are paralytic with joy: on their plastic chairs
they identify the depth of field of such paradoxes
and exult in it – they presuppose no need
for emotional closure.
That was then. And now?
Well, only you & I are left, and we’re engaged
In refutation. Yours is a pint of bitter,
mine’s a Guinness. This proposition is true. We raise
our glasses, we refute it
and refute again.
SHIFTS GENRE OFTEN
The poet is one who commits
acts of barbarism out of
social urgency. She babbles
and is a rejection of the
language of. She keeps the context
problematic, pivots as often
as possible, which permits
the tide. This is kind of lingo
phrase for those sorts of people lost
in “the water of the river”
when the water is the river.
Its maps are metamorphic not
atemporal, a comedy of
metonymic chains, of logics
*For Lyn Hejinian, some of whose presentation in the King’s Talks series, King’s College London, April 1998, I have paraphrased freely here.
BECOME GEMS HERE
The map has got scrambled & we are all
delighted. My foot is ambiguous, it has
locationality but not
positionality. Don’t stop. “Those useful choreographies
can easily become a baleful aerobic”* and
once the stultifiers have a hex on warp agencies
who knows where it’ll end up?
But I am certain of a noble uncertainty, it’s OK
now I see that you in your way
radiate and this is legal & good
And everyone says you got the look
of the artist formerly known as god.
We are conversant with our glorious plangent mess
gazing rapidly past this which into here
• The quotation is attributed to Chris Cheek in New Hampshire, September 1996
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
31 Basalt Wind-chimes for the Window-Box of Earthly Pleasures
The End of the Twentieth Century 2
Implosive Samples 2
Human Dust 5
Twentieth Century Blues 64
O
Not a book of ayres not a solid monotone. An eye. An ear. Willed to pleasure, let's take a note for a walk across the humming strings. Human
O
Human dust on which history overdosed twice (at least) in one century
O
This dance means bumping into things, yet jump back from the path of Creation's clockwork
O
Atheism does not exist because god invented it! A force to vent: Velopoesis
O
A single voice on a single page - there's music enough. The newspaper vendor cries: ‘Echo ... Echo
O
Plonk (see plunk); his rush of pleasure haunts the paths of sense with sensation
O
But that spooky charm is not earthly goodness as one would want to know it!
O
The fat, melting, dissipates more energy than it conserves. As does repeating the spiky line that unravels into a force larger than its parts
O
‘There ain't no way they can replace this vacuum I created in human history
O
The discipline of hazard and high quality shoots aloft the victims' pitiable admiration that builds under the crust of pain while Creation adjusts its ancient braces
O
The Author of Bangs, against which we nuzzle the footnote of something like human justice. If he is condemned to time, push the eye out and climb out, as from a shell into the bright dream of tomorrow. Obtain your liberty and fiery scope, a phoenix of ‘Socio-Pleasurableness’!
O
Routes bloomed across bound wastes: up to off and over and out until they feel like jelly: ‘Your faire lookes enflame
O
A sensation that is almost an emotion an aubade an algorithmic simulation
O
(a vacuum
O
Suck parody? Constituents of pleasure are not to be taken for granted
O
(sings:) Dear, if you change, I'll melt away like lard!
O
Jaunty now, where the lyrics are dainty. Its opposite, in semantic counterpoint, a miraculous parliament!
O
Keep Creation dramatic and didactic, that's the trick! Each single eye is plugged tight with transformations
O
The strange persistence of the meanings of certain words through centuries. Which syllable shall we elongate to quench again with love?
O
The right to pleasure, as under statute. A unit of pleasure, its animus (Who needs devils with gods like that?
O
Born again, to free Poetic Fury? Dust caught in bees' wax. Turn your lamp up in unbelief. Pleasure has no balance
O
to catch the almost-involuntary spurt of semen or the spiritualist who contacted Bradlaugh after death to catch his confession! Weightless epiphanies
O
‘Shine him off that window!’ This goes with saying
O
Who said purity wove their words, advertising just one admired synthesis?
O
Has an oath truer currency for being underwritten by fear and by stone-eyed defenders of monuments? Cease to be pleasuring response is lost until it sings far from a said
O
Shifting rime that easie flatterer a cat chasing a fly
O
Pleasure's twin. Standing by his word, a god of flesh she forms
O
Clocking form, the infectious eye catches pleasure being caused. The unhasty song when responsibility descants as response
O
The sigh of a cosmos, cooling, expanding; the resurrection of an idea of the word as
O
Unseal the lid at last! A chamber of twentieth century echoes rings. Soiled prose-songs of Velopolis
June 1999
Robert Sheppard
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Mendoza
fringe saddles
unsaturated
student disaster oils rated/reacted
from the smeared throne exchange heat
system freezers firmly- the compost
surface scrolled fingers reduce & protract the pie
induction in this matter unusually absent
investiture harbours
herbivore grades blest
professions or social shorts
profoundly refunded
tune general tardy
demand smoke
function pull off
with traveller’s joy/ a child of 7 years needs
testa splits) to bury for nothing:
46firsts.com
place & appliance a-
greed with the employer
in funding the deep fringe saddles as follows:
1) production of the Basidium Nexus Plan (BNP)
2) deamination of isolate force-pump & graft
3) storage of cupped garden soil will do- essence
of yellow torch; &
4) regulation of the chromolume in plundering
equation of the last
items ad valorem advert expenditure
whereabouts & come smaller
assigned a fiscal place in a tokonoma rivulets
& droplets react
without throat rate
looking like homozygous
or vestigial wings war
on worthwhile
wear on any cut godwottery
not yet raised to a yodel
multiple asset tubers
& polythene side-lines sovereign clap
largely backward or handicapped for the secular
chambr´e at the momentary canal they turn
thyme-eaters to credit
“dust yourself off there
let alphas decide weather a headlong stop-gap
or warped flax engine will cross inert phenotype
suicide in the same
ludic counters to a prejudice
chin up” you can wig out
if you wag trails
-----------------------------------------------------------
Helen Berry
THE TASTE OF THE ONION
OUR nation is at WAR
OUR ECONOMY is in RECESSION
The civilised world F
A
C
E
S UNPRECEDENTED DANGERS
YET
THE STATE OF OUR UNION
HAS NEVER BEEN STRONGER
OUR NATION HAS
CAPTURED
ARRESTED
AND RID
THE WORLD OF THOUSANDS
OF TERRORISTS
SAVED A PEOPLE
FROM STARVATION
FREED A COUNTRY
FROM BRUTAL OPPRESSION
A $$$ BILLION DOLLARS $$$ A MONTH
TODAY * * * *
WOMEN * * * *
ARE * * *
FREE
OUR PROGRESS IS A TRIBUTE TO THE
MIGHT
OF
THE UNITED STATES MILITARY
(THEY) HAVE DELIVERED
A MESSAGE
YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE
THE JUSTICE
OF THIS NATION
SEMPER FI MY LOVE
OUR CAUSE IS JUST
TENS OF THOUSANDS
OF
DANGEROUS KILLERS
SCHOOLED
IN THE METHODS
OF
MURDER
THE MEN AND
WOMEN
OF
OUR
ARMED FORCES
SPREAD
THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD
LIKE
TICKING
TIME BOMBS
SET
TO GO
OFF
WITHOUT
WARNING
AMERICA IS ACTING
AMERICA AND AFGHANISTAN ARE NOW ALLIES
LET’S PASS A STIMULUS PACKAGE
Girl from Ipanema
Carnival carnivore casting worms
Jewelled watch, sleek chic bait
A gluttonous feast of flesh
pretty,
preened
and primed await
Metre high plumes on glittering crowns
Fandango frippery
Fringing flickery
Hormones transported in
sweaty rivulets
Amazon rivers coursing
Maraca beads
swirling white noise
Tom-tom pacing
pelvic thrust
Native rhythms evoke
lustful swelling
Wave pulses to the edge
Hairs twitch
In-breath
held
waiting
Heartbeat re-sounds
throb
Crescendo approaches
Pace quickens
Pupils dilate
Flesh judders
Globs trickling over
glistening skin
pulled
translucent
Precocious gutter child
re-turned
Chicken bones
line
the Street
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Clemson
Before reconstruction
Horsetails whipped by the hot wind
as the crocodiles scrape their scales
against the dead oaks
blistered by the Sun
desiccated statues of forgotten shade.
Brown-eyed deer flicker
through the tall golden grasses
laden with fat ticks,
scenting the water,
fearing to drink
under the lion’s, snarl
over the dead lambs.
While pink, grey and green
lampreys suck the life from
the great salmon as they
lie in the gravid beds.
All must come to this course?
This Eden where the key
is jammed in the lock.
Overwound climate?
Broken Spring?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rupert Loydell
HOUSE OF GLOOM
I flew home each night from wherever I had been
To watch my father die, slept on the floor beside him.
Colours bleached out while I was away, everything
turned to brown: ochre, tawny, mustard, spice.
Death continued about its secret business;
no-one ever spoke about what was going on.
Stumps of bushes are sending up shoots,
Often in the form of prophecy or story.
No-one listens. I am somewhere else by now,
at a standstill. Waiting for Dad to arrive.
I must stop turning to see if he is following,
must learn to speak in the past tense.
Only the hardiest can stand the present;
I do not understand the word memory.
At the bottom of my heart it is proven:
melancholy makes everything right.
Turn on the light and play music til daybreak;
Loss must be burnt into the world.
My father is now cross-referenced,
a man no longer in the public domain.
‘Don’t pull that innocent routine on me’
is something he once might have said.
I twitch and fidget, pace the field;
he zips and flickers through the world.
River of Breath
Already, I know
some of my clothes
will outlast me;
and that there won’t
be time to read my books
or hear my CDs again.
Past and future
stretch tight between
loss and promise,
an intersection
where topography
becomes narrative:
a dangerous turn,
hills, bridges, towers,
an underpass
all possible routes
through the woods
to where clear skies
and rivers wait.
We have drifted away
from the moment…
I wish for nothing
to change, should
probably worry more
as ambition slips
out of sight. Time
is not my property,
the end of the work
is in view. I snuggle
into a tent of words.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Clarke
from Skeleton Sonnets
the age
of what
to input
profiles idem
a fleur
not inflated
full face
in your
one step
from the
edge pretty
as a
puncture’s high
pitched collapse
“Who will ever read these slips…?”
Li ho (trans J.D. Frodsham)
tips windswept
neglect stirs
a flicker
within silk
sheathed speckling
leaves illegible
pits beetle
drilled piecemeal
deliver the
insinuative image
scenting drizzle
spirits twitter
a relict
bled script
Jas G. Maddock
I USED TO FEEL INTENSE IN MY DEFENCE OF MY DIFFERENCE- NOW I’M COMPLETELY INDIFFERENT. A study of dreams…
I met two floral decked boys on the way to nowhere
They greeted me with a bow and a shower of fragrance
Shrank to the size of small and crept inside my eyes
Stayed there beautiful and danced until I died
If you look closely at things far off you mistake them
Splendorous pretty youths bedecked in dazzled flowers
Asters, camilias, dahlias, passiflora purple divinity boys
Then as they draw nearer the magic sours
Rotten carcass pickled sickly malicious men and women
Smell of burnt flesh and goats, dressed in the same coats
All humans are covered in boring skin and inside are boring bones
Corpuscles, muscles, kidneys: heartless marauding drones.
I believe in nothing, I live out my lifeless days dazed
But a tiny pinhole of a crack screams out inside of me
Not very loud of course, cracks cannot shout very loud
That I must carry on drained, pained and maimed emotionally.
I dream of bees, of wasps with cigarettes in their arses
In pink lipstick rooms with strange men by white windows
I dream of mazes and of running feared I feel the beads of sweat
Palpitating excruciating; the scare from which I froze
I see men with teeth like waylaid graveyard tombstones charred
Walking silent; prowling, the growling; it might be their empty stomach
But they might just growl as that’s what weird men are supposed to do
To scare young maidens and princes and leave them wary and flummoxed.
I hear my name called over the waves of the sea by the beach
Echoing, dancing over the fresh, white, salty foaming milk
The mermaids and men protect me from the human scurf
Pox-like and wormy they spread disaster from old age to birth
The birds talk their bird language all full of mystery and riddle
Provide a kind of company and punctuate the silent nothing
I listen and strain to make sense of the twittery flittery
But after a while it gets me feeling a bit jittery.
I block out the sounds of the past in my present head
Threatening to take me over and pull me fully back into pain
I think of golden boys, winged and fragrant with dark hair
They fight to banish the morbid memories, of more I will gain
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alice Lenkiewicz
milieu
now she’s back again
inside the illusion
preferred this time
maybe you should persuade me
that insects fly
all i see is the earth move in waves
when this is over
will you consider me or
will it change
something vacant
blue glass blue snow
something perhaps
another random ricochet
…so we lit some cigarettes
kissed
despised each other
laughed
walked our separate ways
in-between artificial displays
of glass fish
transparent gaping heads
one or two reflections
i gave the visitor directions
yes over there
then watched her search her bag
as they played that song
… thought I was someone good
she still couldn’t find what she was
looking for
put her hand over her mouth
31
Sheila Murphy
Aggravated Asphalt
Time and against the granular induction chevrons placed their amber laves where
Chipped rock seemed intact. For all practical precipice, there seemed a comely
Avenue to fake. Tensions modestly enveloped see-through evanescence. Mainly
From the spun confronting shack presiding near the temples. Brains [dry] before
Beauty. Age is the retort by vitamins, the lock of pear, the whole meal caveats that
Lank into comportment. The coronary altar cloth ′eclairs that any mandible will
Do. Maintained by birds of prey still skivvy although posthumous. That might fray
Semblances before the bake themselves into a twist. This rightly shakes the
Veered foundations into mountable renewals. Plagues come back to haunt what
They have taunted once. And then the sway, the showplace and the cult.
Pronouncing the death sentence in a nice way, the surface as altimeter
Nary a Ration
She kept using the word natural. I was very tired. The afternoon seemed to have
Shelved energy that might have been within the spigot and eventually fallen into
Use. I could not hear the altar in her humdrum range of motion. Tentacles were
Aching to give back to Morse Code tincture of a ravishing and soon-to-be
Announced young fact. The mercy of this wish waltz was its semblance to the
Known. A welding class would have fortified. Likewise, a modest sum of clash.
The penury in which her limbs were steeped made soak time seem inanimate.
Then the worry of the free, the timber out in back, the mere thought of a coast.
These intrepid shoulder-length reflections on a dish of vindaloo were nearly posh
Compared with petty actuals that graced the nearby boulders. All one would have
Wanted was surprise to be indicative of rest. But this seemed creviced with
Invasion. While telling the tale, one reminisces brilliantly until the headrest won’t
Include the dromedary motion sickness one considers as an antidote to a learned
Severity.
Roan latitude, a vague sense of the nest alongside promises
Trevor Landers
House on Oeo Road
Paint runs from cracks in the ceiling
as if the room were wounded –
This body, and we inside.
perhaps it is running
from a spear-pierce into our own
visional vision.
Where words and burgeoning
shapes fail
The birth of painting is reflected
From color above the ceiling.
the black backing shows through
where a mirror has been partly shattered –
scalloped edges of glass fallen away,
so that there is a central
sculptural night
surrounded by the day lit
reflection of trees
that sway
at the edge of the anxious mind.
In fine heat
two images flash,
one into the other:
a ceiling of painted stars, pale-blue fluorescence
and an unkempt lawn,
glistening
from a recent rain.
By the curve of the earth
night’s depth is amplified
as from the sill
of a bay window from the house, on Oeo Road.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bennet
City of Culture
start on bricks
add the people - the I who have
then I who have nothing
there is something
see if a people see
looking for a city's strength
looking good
trivialised
because trivialise is in the viewpoint
see the city of us
Liverpool
we work writing
human for ourselves
and of pieces a side of a face
a face of subsistence
of where the desperate
bring misery
so you mostly take on
the form of squalor
shut sad as if ashamed
Liverpool while first aside
accept reflection
a struggle in diversity
raise another state
at stake the state
that inhabits kindly
but I and us have
no direction home
lost because
people lost hope
turn don't position
don't do snapshots
one shot failure
write of the problems
the homeless
protect people
create underclass
what is not should be
the Liverpool that is
who writes of the system
and worth of city
cries for Liverpool
everyone from people
drug foisted everywhere
history induced
and who is history
it's crap money but it happens
need your eyes and everywhere
talking only of architecture
banks own the wit
we have been the way of poverty
suffering people
living think say
what this picture is
Liverpool
city of culture
__________________________________
when the cold wind blows
there are places we go
in the southern end of town
where decaying ships
rust out a wasteland
we walk back alleys
the weather against us
hands with woollen socks for gloves
coat collar turned against the wind
this is the reality
the crackling
ark cutting
weld flashing night
and here we rut
bum fuck the future
and cry sometimes
yes cry
when cold winds blow
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Fallaize
Ad-Ban
Took the colours emphasised, looking changes
into the mathematician, invariant climbs eight
to the schemers, where, believing sunlight made
separate perception dream burning myself.
Beneath next, a gate, hinged white singularity,
a quicksilver should, better surround the
objectification, smothering the improvisation.
The super-structure examined, type fixed.
Clarity sighs into realising peripheral, glanced, indefinite euphony
until analytic dropped, shifted, lowered, pushed
over reflex record.
Recollection: lying in a eucalyptus, the gravity opposes the lot.
Water to our walkway, scattered sonata co-operatively subsiding.
The trumpet rolls
hits
and one wall blows. Rush the damage.
Your black fingers roll temporal air and the
force felt increases. The shared hole,
the switch.
37
Two, three, carry two. Face dancing visitors, see
the stationary shadows, under a field
calls out, exhausted. The untimed unified uses
signify filling, exhaling in the between so hurts.
Balcony shatters, erupted windows. A walkway
where fire, the fact, came. We wanted retrenching, the open
through telephone-cross. Listen. Wings before resistance
the functions fraught without possible
following drops and background, in noting glass colour.
Broke, the congruent roof. Bird wood. Silence. Haywire.
Began once, precise the start. I,
knowing, upright
just steel, run the directions, the market,
incapable curve, jerk. From notions before
Perfect you. The shoulder circular, just
passing your moving: poetry.
It takes it’s surprises, it takes changing a rebound
labelled “unattended”, marked “decay”. The eye
with a shouting someone calls physically, the walkway
with tearing, the energy of the distance.
Silence, a doubt passes, regarding discarded zero
Sighs in his page, eyes vigorously drawn. The crossing,
knowing anger. Momentarily in blazes, his bright sirens
in the inescapable reflections call the dust.
The utility sends winter to the alternations on the imagined,
realised sword, and the price.
Dancing down in turning digits, a Fireman in
unliquidated blank-screened yesterday necessity.
To the weather, and a history.
Lovely light, the sky strictly duplexed
with the freedom, measured down their wheels.
A torch, light circumvents description. My
time in each moment marks still potent, unbroken. But you
become another arrangement. I, my uneven changes moves
it selectively. Self-love flattered a new folded past, sprays the
pepper- my pillow perception.
The notes are gone. Clean the sign. Beware the distance.
Accompanied sighs secretes cloves. My somersault flurry
hit the city, opens on where it’s hesitant sound launch, say
our distance was copied. Value for reality, simply the
disturbing violins. Watch, fixed, the cordon from distance.
I, outside. One desire, with glass.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Griffiths
BEE-BIKE
For unto us
we are sluggish
in honey-diesel
a chamber a six-facet fruit-transparent
SLIF SLIF SLIF
beat and a
BUMB BUMB BUMB
finding we are unemployed again
slif at a shiny rim of wax
float
booling boon and hint
no Royce no north no land-fill
extra-ordinary
revolve
and but a tiny tube of living contact for passage
pleases like low-apple syrup
rods of flavour
shook to lemon dust
slight sips fat-water
in fret-strut
solid burgher
but glow-in-home a lamp
of wings
and will we see Mother?
the wall
of slow soapstone
rice-glum hinting light
what these mysterious barricades
I eat
I emancipate
wing-leg
arm-head
leached in the rain
of loose liquid food our
first bath
or
euphoric
deep-root
plum
a-rotted snort pip
a fellow hum
to preen
crawl explore
foot each-over
the melody today is ‘Dargomel’
the chant
a tumbled walk
for we are to pay our respects
and the Queen
roseate and bile
love-fur fire channel of
mill of the loving she-workers
and we too shine
gold and global
rasp-castle rigs
on leg
a rude mark
we wake to
as prussic glamour
stripe
a grow, crèche
glow to growl
they shake
sting
SPIDER MAN
long
bus-stop
man maybe
shiny as new
only the dull plaques
sockets
if you glance, catch a glance
stands perch-rigid
preternatural thin, long
still-stannary pipe-crunch clamp-hog-teeth
hidden
How!
After a familiar while,
an elegant leg
seems to almost shuffle
a beginning of a little dance
(I do not know what---
Galliard? Bootlegger Shimmy? Country Jig?)
lop-sided
A terrific burst
Rustle and rush up to,
tear away from
bald beserk aggression against a nearby sky-wall
up and up
we say, “Oh no! he’ll fall!”
But slapstick-stylish
then he rives his shirt open
and SPINS
something to web him to safety
that gluey confusion of middle
(waving, behaving, saving)
all because of the bus
well, we run
well, he knows
Spider-woman is inside
acrid
svelt
snaky-necked
she rides
and her neat bundles beside her
Publications
Ken Edwards: Poems published here are from a forthcoming collection: Eight + Six
Sheila E. Murphy: Most recent book-length collection is from Stride Press, titled THE STUTTERING OF WINGS (2002).
AC. Evans: Forthcoming collection of poems from Via Dolorosa Press.
Cory Harding: memories of air: Collection of poems and images.
Robert Sheppard; Patricia Farrell: The Blickensderfer Punch: Ship of Fools 2002
Fucking Time; six songs for the Earl of Rochester: Ship of Fools
Robert Sheppard: the necessity of poetics: ship of fools, Liverpool, 2002
Journals
The Radiator: a journal of contemporary poetics. Editor. Scott Thurston.
Oasis: Edited by Ian Robinson and Yann Lovelock.
The Paper: Editor: David Kennedy.
The Journal: Editor: Sam Smith.
Gallery: COLLECT in Liverpool
Art Exhibitions
49, Lark Lane, Liverpool.
http://home.btconnect.com/collectgallery
43
Contributors
Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent book-length collection is from Stride Press, titled THE STUTTERING OF WINGS (2002). Murphy’s work appears widely in literary presses. Her home is in Phoenix, Arizona, where she and Beverly Carver founded and coordinated the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series for twelve years.
Robert Sheppard has now completed his long project Twentieth Century Blues. The most recent parts published were Empty Diaries, Stride, 1998, and The End of the Twentieth Century, Ship of Fools, 2002. Senior Lecturer in Writing and English at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, he has also published widely on contemporary poetry and on the discourse of poetics.
Ken Edwards was born in 1950 and lives in London, where he works
as a journalist. He is currently editorial director of Reality Street Editions. His own publications include: Intensive Care (1986), Good Science (1992), 3,600 Weekends (1993) (collections of poetry); Futures (1998) (novel). The poems published here are from a forthcoming collection: Eight + Six.
David H W Grubb. B. 1941. Poems and prose published in UK, USA and Austria. THE MEMORY OF ROOMS (new & selected) published by STRIDE last year. New collection due in 2003 as well as a novel.
Helen Berry: Has worked as a systems engineer and business analyst. Currently on the MA Writing course at Edge Hill University College. Interested in Drama and Poetry.
Matt Fallaize: Lives, works and writes in Ormskirk, Lancashire. An MA graduate, he is a member of the Poetry and Poetics research group at Edge Hill University College, where he is in constant fear of being found out for the chancer that he clearly is.
Alice Lenkiewicz: Artist/Poet. Brought up in Plymouth. Presently lives in Skelmersdale where she is studying her MA in Writing Studies and editing Neon Highway. Published in Fire and Smoke.
Mark Mendoza celebrated his twenty-second birthday with a one-man Mariachi band in a cactus garden close to Brighton and Hove. He is currently writing the critical autobiography Finder’s Keepers: The Life and Work of Aaron ‘The Animal’ Gill. Network information and material
containing the words ‘host’ and ‘explosive’ may be forwarded to markmendoza64@hotmail.com.
Jasmine G Maddock: A surreal, imaginative and quirky artist/writer. Graduated in 1996 from John Moores University in Literature. Has undertaken a cornucopia of art/poetic work, including work selected for unesco. it (poetry) in 2001, poetry in ‘Twisted Shadows’, out now from ‘Spotlight Poets’, winning the society of All Artists (SAA) 2000 Experimental Professional section with ‘Manwoman’ and work on www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/j/jasmine.
Trevor Landers is a Lecturer in Communication at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Trevor’s recent publications are in Never Bury Poetry, Poetic Hours, Pierian Springs and The Voice of the Turtle. He is currently reading the lesser known books of the French surrealist author, George Bataille, and intends to write an academic paper on them.
Jim Bennett is a writer, poet and lecturer, who is married with six children and living in Merseyside (UK). He has over forty books published, covering many subjects including, transport studies, marketing and poetry. He is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool where he delivers courses on such diverse subjects as, travel writing, science fiction, journalism, and other aspects of creative writing.
Down in Liverpool. A new CD of Music and Poetry from. Jim Bennett. "an authentic voice bringing the sound of beat to Liverpool" http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/
David Clemson was a teacher and University lecturer in mathematics, science and education. He now makes his living from writing mathematics and science books. All of his previous experience and qualifications have been in mathematics and science. David is now taking the MA in Writing Studies at Edge Hill and having the most exciting time discovering new things about himself.
Rupert M. Loydell’s writing has appeared in hundreds of magazines in the UK, Europe and America; in many anthologies; and in several solo collections. New work was recently commissioned by the Bath Literature Festival, Devon Arts In Schools Initiative (DAISI) and by Exeter Health Care Arts. Rupert Loydell is Managing Editor of Stride Publications, which he founded in 1982. He also edits the associated Stride magazine-now an online journal at www.stridemagazine.co.uk
Adrian Clarke’s collections include “Ghost Measures” (Actual size, 1987), and “Obscure Disasters”, “Millennial Shades & Three Papers” and “Paradise Gardens” (all Writers Forum). Work anthologised in “verbi visi voco” (Writers Forum, 1992) and “foil” (Etruscan Books, 2000). He co-edited four issues of “Angel Exhaust” during its two incarnations, and “Floating Capital:new poets from London” (Potes & Poets Press, 1991) with Robert Sheppard. He currently edits “And” with Bob Cobbing.
A.C. Evans
Born in Hampton Court in 1949, A.C Evans lived in South London until 1963 when he moved to Essex. Moving back to London in 1973, he currently lives in Mortlake, near Richmond. His artistic activities include both poetry and visual art. His drawings, collages, reviews, articles, translations, poetry and poetic fictions have appeared in numerous magazines including Stride, Fire, Fisheye, Cold Print, Memes, Penny Dreadful, Angel Exhaust and Terrible Work.
Bill Griffiths
Bill Griffiths, born Middlesex 1948, now living in Seaham, Co.Durham. Mixed career, from odd jobs to poetry publishing to studying Old English to (currently) dialect research with the Centre for Northern Studies, Northumbria University. Poetry first published in Poetry Review, 1972 (when edited by Eric Mottram) and subsequently booklets from Writers Forum (Bob Cobbing) and many other little presses. Recent publications: A book of spilt cities (Etruscan Books), Ushabtis (Talus Editions), Durham & other sequences (West House Books).
NEON HIGHWAY. POETRY / ART MAGAZINE
Neon Highway publishes, poetry, poetics, art, reviews and letters.
Subscription
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Alice Lenkiewicz
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Lancashire
WN8 9JP
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