Friday, September 26, 2014

A Poem by Paul Tristram


A Naive Trap for Love-Sick Souls

She unclasped the ornate
silver Celtic chain
from around her neck
and held up the little
coffin shaped locket
to my ear and I listened
at the little hinge upon the side
just like to the sea inside a shell
as she had instructed.

"It's faint but I can hear them.
It's like being in a back bedroom
of a terraced house late at night
when it's perfectly quiet outside
then hearing someone groaning
loudly in every consecutive house
all down the side of your road.
How fascinating and remarkable,
will you show me how it's done?"

"In its native tongue it is called
'a naive trap for love-sick souls'
Yes, I will show you soon enough
just be patient while I finish tiring
of our present moments together!"


Seven Severely Severed Sentiments

I was going to write an intricate essay,
bringing into play
both the weight of rumours
and the coldness of known fact.
Woven intelligently and skillfully
with outside influences; the weather,
the privatization of both
British Rain and Royal Mail,
morning hangovers and other general
irritabilities, curses and daily obstacles.
Interjected with sarcastic humour
and peppered with cold-blooded horror.
Segment the entire lot into seven meaty parts
to later psycho-analyse, point fingers at,
tar and feather, flog publically
and use as some form of insane evidence
for a horrible-yet to be decided-future date!
But what is the point, really?
When I simply just do not like you anymore
and it is all your fault not mine, sunshine.



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.




Wednesday, September 24, 2014

A Poem by Ken L. Jones


Shared Memories

The warbling birds left plenty unsaid during the hours
That wilted in the winter sun on that icy beach
That cooed sweet nothings that were never meant for me
But unknown to the world of many sizes
I was born and raised in life on the moon
And even though my existence has been
Far from a pool of honey at least I always had you
You never exactly left
Even if you weren't always there for me
And if sometimes you filled me with regrets
Still you are here
Something you've always told me counts for everything in the end
And so for that I will have to take your work
I wanted all of this to be much more than that
But perhaps that's neither of our faults but is the very nature
Of this mortal world where little that's good or right ever gets done
And when it does it's at the highest of prices and is very little fun
Which explains why at the end of most people's lives
The smart ones always seek elsewhere than here when they search for paradise




For the past thirty-five plus years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of his poetry.  This volume held a great allure for him as he has long been an aficionado of such places of chance and fun.  His earliest memory almost six decades ago was of the well-known The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, which he lived very close to.  Later when he was in grade school his parents bought a house in Anaheim, California, that was only a skateboard's ride away from Disneyland where he often went and was lucky enough to become friendly with its creator Walt Disney which years later resulted in him being employed by Disney Studios doing various creative things there for a time.  Just prior to that when he was first married he worked full-time at Knott's Berry Farm where he met its founder Walter Knott.  To this day he remains fascinated by places like this and they often seep into both the poetry he writes and the many works of prose fiction that he has also concurrently published in the last decade.



Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A Poem by Susan Dale


Us

A barb wire
         hour
              around us
A ragged tear
   Beyond repair
             Arrow piercing
      this bloodless vein



Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on Kind of a Hurricane Press, Ken*Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue.  In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  She has two published chapbooks on the internet:  Spaces Among Spaces on languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time on Baromentric Pressures Authors Series.