Three Poems by Paul Tristram

Her Heart is a Derelict Playground

Where the swings are now only used
by the ghosts of memory.
Who would have thought
that building a wall
would leave you feeling so
cold, lonely and vulnerable
to the real enemy . . . Yourself?
There's a boarded up candy shop close by,
the once bright colors are faded
to something resembling nicotine stains.
It's hard to view without wincing,
so wince she must,
which keeps the "cringing" company at least.
That "hurt" doesn't heal with isolation,
it merely festers into a soul shadow.
Dark thoughts multiply by the counting,
spite, meanness follows "not letting go"
and masochistic self-righteousness
is the sure way of keeping you
stuck and squirming inside that hole.



The One That Got Away . . . Can Stay Away!

To be genuinely happy to be who you are,
where you are and with whom you are with
at this very point in life is two fists full
of Luck & Chance, "straight as an arrow" Fate
and a thousand hurricanes of Magic
all focused in upon on exact point and principle.
You've reached the sumMIT of something important,
the woes and troubles that dogged your footsteps
were needed, you've faced down every struggle,
survived each enemy, learning and growing
stronger with each "hard knock" lesson.
Emerging scarred but magnificently Triumphant!
take a breather (You've Earned It!)
smile and feel proud of yourself,
you are on the right path at last
and exactly where you need to be.
The stepping stones are aligned and ready
for the next part of the journey, Soldier . . . Well done.



Closing Doors Behind You is the Way Forward

Unless you want to sit in a room alone,
drinking into the small hours
talking dumbly into the past?
You've lived in bedsits,
you've seen it time and time again.
Broken men and women . . . given up on life.
Remember that computer guy who lived upstairs?
Cried himself to sleep every night pathetically
like an eight year old girl for months,
six other rented rooms listening to him.
Come to terms with your past,
lay it to bed and walk on from it.
Learn from your mistakes and forgive yourself,
you're still breathing and that's all that counts.
Strike off in a new direction,
you'll do better this time, you're wiser now.
Baby steps and small potatoes . . .
just being up and moving is winning.
You don't need to be lost like they are,
open up those metaphoric curtains
and let the sun back into your life . . .
it's good to see you emerging out the other side.

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.  Buy his books, Scribblings of a Madman (Lit Fest Press) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1943170096, Poetry from the Nearest Barstool at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326241035, and a split poetry book The Raven and the Vagabond Heart with Bethany W. Pope at http://www.amazon.co.uk./dp/1326415204.  You can also read his poems and stories here!  http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

She Looked Like a Peony

By a lake that was like my childhood nursery
Where I contemplated the impossibility of my first love
Beneath a moon that seemed to me to be suffering
Slouching by dark trees like divided continents
Touched by patches of bandaged chilliness
Whose insufficient evidence and unverifiable agendas
Snatched me down into a descent into printed words
And a fame I came to love found on streets full of poets
As pretty as an opera house dancing to the pipes of a new year dawning
Sleeping on the mattress that imprisons us both
Dead birds now who are victims of a brutal winter
Gone for a long time because we loved someone too well
Crying in the bathtub and on a blue street corner
Whose youthful gait was like a nice catholic girl afraid of all she felt
Death haunted in my immortality
Melancholy in the sweet scraps of my own memorabilia
And clear eyed in my loneliness
Bereft and cooked over an open fire
Angelic for reasons beyond what is needed
To interact with a too rough muse
And in my own entire universe of exalted moments
As I walked across the land of
The one perfect woman that I never quite met
Amazing bebop in the flux of my chronic distortions
An error in the text of some Mesozoic forest
Intricately connected in a Sahara Desert of mask making blown into neutrons
A jagged riff in the oblivion thunder of the void
Swallowed up by vortexes vanishing
But always still always a believer in true love.



Yet to Be Titled

Back when a wine cask was a time machine
While hanging out on a beach of surrealistic bubbles
French kissing I didn't say a word about her gratuitous nudity
Because I was no stranger to jigsaw puzzles
We were like bees drinking orchid nectar
As we awakened journey deep in our fizzy drinks
Transformative like Doctor John Lilly inside his isolation tank
Shaded by the shadow of the Beatles
Cooled by the civil disobedience of a world slowly turning to ice
We became tremors that could never be replaced
A bell tower that collapsed
Locked in a love like Cleopatra and Marc Antony
That eventually gave way to a fallen upon sword by one's own hand
And a much too teased and ornery asp



Arranged Like a Pinwheel

The noonday sun was a sizzling cast-iron skillet
Its light through the trees sugar dusted sleeping dogs
Looking for comfort in the shadows and shade
While I spent the afternoon in the LA County Art Museum
Seduced by heavenly abstract paintings
Like elaborate mirrors made of the ice around champagne
That shimmered like your long blonde pigtailed hair
And your granny gown that twisted around your svelte young frame
Like a lavender turntable playing Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze
In that series of interconnected rooms
Where though you ignored me you were well aware
Of exactly what I wanted as I stared
At what I thought at the time was the truest love I would ever feel
But how little did I know that the only one I would love forever
Was someone I didn't yet even know.




For the past thirty-five 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 poetry.  

A Poem by John D. Robinson

I Miss Elizabeth

Throughout my life I have
always had few friends and
amongst the best was
Elizabeth;
work united us as friends, we
were both married with
children and then
simultaneously we found
ourselves temporarily
separated from our partners;
we began to socialize in
and out of work; Elizabeth was
an attractive veteran
dope smoker with
long blonde hair, a well shaped
body, long legs and a
wonderful sense and enjoyment
of life;
for about 18 months we
spent a great deal of time
with one another; one cold
November week we were
residents of Samye Ling
a Tibetan Buddhist monastery
in the wilderness of Scotland;
we went armed with a carrier-bag
of home-grown and an endless
supply of beer; it was a wild
fucking week with very
little meditation or
contemplation;
Elizabeth could take her drink
and with a playful glint in her yes,
whilst out drinking
would get me into some
difficult situations, she'd say
in a loud voice
something like "Why don't you
go over to that fat guy with all the
mouth at the bar and tell him to
shut the fuck up"
"I haven't drank enough yet"
I would say, "Let's move on"
With a fearless and adventurous
spirit, Elizabeth traveled alone to
India, smoked heroin with some
mountain people and brought
back some beautiful and exotic gifts for her friends;
shortly after we were both
reunited with our partners, her
husband was killed in an
accident in South America;
I watched on as Elizabeth gave
up on life; she took handfuls
of pills and steroids and drank
and smoked and she never
smiled, my friend Elizabeth
was always smiling;
whatever was in her heart was
no longer there and her
body and mind plunged into
a silent hospital coma for long
months on end;
the blonde hair now silver, the
eyes still staring blankly, her being
motionless and unresponsive;
I visited regularly and spoke to
her and held her dead-like hands
and told her of her sons that
would never visit; the pain was
too much for them and her
eyelids never fluttered but I
hoped, in some way that
she heard my voice;
just like I can hear hers
right now.

John D. Robinson was born in the UK in July 1963; began writing poetry aged 16 and published first poem a year later; over the years his poems have appeared in many small press magazines, journals and online publications; recent work has appeared in Bareback Lit, Red Fez, Underground Books, Dead Snakes, Pulsar.  He has published several small chapbooks of poetry, 2 short story collections, is married, has 1 daughter, 2 grandchildren, 4 cats and 1 dog; he has worked a variety of jobs since age 15 and continues to do and he enjoys wine and other pursuits that may not be considered healthy.

Two Poems by Changming Yuan

Last Meet with My First Love

meeting you face to face
you seem to hide yourself
behind a fog in another world

separated by the pacific in between
you often look like the flower
blooming on my window ledge

have a blue dream
and you will see a little cloud
drifting around like me
near that borderline

I have packed up your entire being tightly
into my backpack, the luggage
I cannot consign, or sent by mail
but carry it with me
close to my chest
for all the unknown years ahead



Valentine Gift

A
Single
Rose
Exchanging
For
A
Whole
Lifetime

Changming Yuan, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks (including Kinship [2015] and The Origin of Letters [2015], is the most widely published poetry author who speaks Chinese but writes English.  Growing up in a remote village, Changming began to learn the English alphabet at 19 and published monographs on translation before moving to Canada.  With a PhD in English, Changming currently co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver and, since mid-2005, has had poetry appearing in 1049 literary journals/anthologies across 34 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review.

Three Poems by Joanna M. Weston

Hanging In

hanging by
          a cat's whisker
          this silence
hanging on
          to your hand
          a nail
hanging for
          this almost-murder
          stolen kisses
hanging in
          cold air
          blue words
hanging from
          my window
          your gift
hanging out
          at the pub
          with friends
hanging tough
          at a meeting
          and a quarrel
hanging up
          on this
          call to you



The Moment

find wallet
and keys

change my shoes

open the door

say "goodbye"

walk out
into rain



Burying Raspberry Tarts

I stood
box in hand
at the bakery door
watching incomers
diners
others leaving
fascinated
          watching people

and there he was
friend from long ago
coming in

I looked
the other way

Joanna M. Weston is married, has two cats, multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses.  Her middle-reader, "Those Blue Shoes," published by Clarity House Press, and poetry "A Summer Father," published by Frontenac House of Calgary.  Her eBooks found at her blog:  http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/

A Poem by Scott Thomas Outlar

Dirty Counter

I digested
our last argument
at the kitchen counter
with half a bottle of vodka
while smoking marijuana
from an aluminum foil tissue paper roll

after leaving you upstairs
in bed
sound asleep
in some
pure oblivion
I'm sure

Just rage righteous
like you always do
and then leave the mess
for someone else to tend

Scott Thomas Outlar survived the chaos of both the fire and the flood . . . barely.  Now he spends the hours trying to figure out how to survive himself.  His words have appeared recently in venues such as Dissident Voice, Calliope Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, Eunoia Review, and Snapping Twig.  More of his writing can be found on his blog at 17numa.wordpress.com

Three Poems by Kelley White

I Have Taken Back All The Post Cards

I ever sent you.  Why don't you ask me why
I don't want a mortgage instead of telling me
I need one.  Do I want to owe death?  Do I want
to leave my children with more debts than I
already owe them?  Sad mother, who wanted to be paid
with forgiveness.  Sad daughter, who wanted
acceptance.  The Dalai Lama might love
me, after all, I may be one with trees and clouds
and even that boat I brought my mother to see
each day in the summer, relying on its schedule
to count down, to scratch off another day.  the ice
is in now on the Lake, and she is denied even
the comfort of a cigarette, an unread book in her
hand, cards laid out for solitaire, and I have taken
back all the postcards I ever sent her.



If you, love, are my soul than who am I?

Listening to your breathing night by night by
night, whispering to your deafer ear love
can you hear me, pulling your arm around
me, hugging you always on your numbest
side?  Tonight I am alone, there is no
dent on your side of the bed, no warm spot
on your pillow just a whisper of what
ought to be your breathing.  Who drove you out?
And if you are gone, soul, am I thought and spirit?
Or dry flesh and hollow bone, sleeping alone?



My Interior Studio

is lit by the soft light of your snore
and rocked by the voice you speak
from your dream.  I try to find
a pencil to write your words into
the palm of my hand but they are always
rubbed out the moment of waking.

I hear you frying bacon, whipping eggs
in the kitchen and I try to remember
the poem you gave me while I
curled against your back.

You believe I inhabit your dream.
You believe I see your dreamworld.

I might remember your visions
even when you've unseen them
but if you feed me my hunger for darkness
breaks in the light of your eyes.



Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire.  Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA.  Her most recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books).  She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.