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L IV ING POETSvolume 2 number 1

First Published by

D ragonheart Press

11 M enin Road

A llestreeDerby DE22 2NL

England

http://welcome.to/livingpoets

livingpoets@seanwoodward.com

2001 Individual Poets

A ll Rights Reserved Worldw ide

Volume 2 Number 1

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Volume II Number IJuly 2001 Era Vulgaris

Edited by Sean Woodward

First Published MMIby

Dragonheart Press11 Menin Road Allestree Derby DE22 2NL England

http://welcome.to/livingpoets

livingpoets@seanwoodward.com

2001 Individual Poets

All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Layout & Graphics by

No part of this electronic journal may be reproduced in anything other than its original form, otherthan for the purposes of review, without the permission of the Editor or Publishers.

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ContentsKamikaze Rain Ivan HyltonThe Visitor Ivan HyltonMother Mary Robert PhelpsTethered Goat Ben Wilensky

Invader Ben WilenskyAfter Rush Hour Geoff Stevens

Caspian Geoff StevensAn Ending To It Robin FordQuilted Minds HPWho Am I HP

Cleansed HPApple Tree Nigel ColesDolphins Nigel Coles

Heart Nigel ColesWho Lost the Love File Will Daunt

The Harrowing Francis SpencerAthwart Him Francis SpencerIn the Forest Francis SpencerPretence Francis Spencer

Absence Francis SpencerEncounters with the Shadow Sean WoodwardMassachusetts Autumn Sean Woodward

The House of Horta Sean WoodwardLuckless in the Far Cloister David Stone

Cancel Call-Waiting David StoneDiving David StoneEvening Drops Timothy HodorThe Crowd of Time Timothy Hodor

23 April Roy ClementsNo Peace Roy ClementsUntil Roy Clements

The Space in Your Mind M PickardElegy For A Poet Louis S. Faber

Dream On, My God Louis S. FaberDust and Ashes Louis S. Faber

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IntroductionWelcome to Volume 2 number 1 of Living Poets.

We continue with this new volume to feature powerfulnew poetry and to provide a platform for the voice of

international poets.

Poets spotlighted in this issue have appeared in SouthCarolina Review (Louis S Faber, New York), Orbis,

Smoke, Pennine Platform (Will Daunt, Lancashire UK)and include the editor of Purple Patch (Geoff Stevens,West Bromwich UK). Ben Wilensky (Rockaway, New

York) has appeared in a multitude of magazines such asLong Island Quarterly, Hobo (Australia), Jerusalem

Review (Israel) and has published two collections withMellen Press.

The background of the poets varies from those who

have never previously expressed themselves in verse toa 60 year old Franciscan friar currently preparing anelectronic book for publication by Denlinger's Press.

Poetry has been a vehicle for healing personal traumas,

inner reflection and observation of this world and itsinhabitants. In sharing their inner worlds with us, theydemonstrate the commonality and interconnectedness ofthe human condition.

Sean WoodwardWarmbrook, 2001

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Kamikaze RainIvan Hylton

Cold,Kamikaze rain, hardSoulless like granite.

Timeless cycleWithout point or end.

Dank grey islandhow you have suffered.Day dreams your only vice

your muse sleepingor dying.

Smear my lazy bodywith your rich blood.Lie and turn inwards,

concentrate, screamhusky

Insults at the moonface that can only watch

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The VisitorIvan Hylton

Madness visited last night,with her Hyena smile,slanting.

A swirl of crazed ebony, bleeding,bubbling

like hot phlegm in the cauldronof her eyes.

Here speed was incrediblesmearing the innards of my tiny roomwith a faint surreal scent,

a threatening territorialurination.

Her impossible garments twitchedand disturbed like an epileptic fitfilling all space with the menace

of tormented snakes,Medusa!

Please spare me your look.Like an erection of feathers

my fragile sanity stands poised.Why bother with such a feeblechallenge?

As sudden as geysers her eyesthrew me to the wallthen bludgeoned my gentle brain

with the curiosity of a childwounding ants.

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Then with the mundane yawn of routinethe morning sun crept through

the windows; she left.I readied myself,with cigarettes and cologne.

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Mother MaryRobert Phelps

Sometimes like a half-remembered fragranceLike smiles in a fading photographSometimes like the melody of a song thats

Hummed all through the nightSometimes like a beautiful gift unexpectedLike the logic of a child in the midst of chaos and fight

Sometimes like a sunset capping the earthwith the promise of morning

Like the feverish hug of forgiveness

Sometimes like the eyes of a little girl on the knitting handsof her grandmother

Like the fingertips of lovers at the love-touch aborning

Sometimes like the birds settling on my mothers tombstoneLike waking hungry for the fevers rackSometimes like feeling Christ sitting in my car

Like the embrace of cool wind on my backSometimes like a loving dark that wishes me wellLike a kiss on my cheek

Sometimes like sweet tears that well into my eyesAre you, are you, O gentle and meekMother of my days

Are you, O mother with arms bigger than Siberia and aVoice smaller than a confessional whisper

Are you Sweet Mama for the days when I lose my hopeJewish mama with your gentle wisteria calm andSmile that burns away clouds and makes a hole in the groundfrom Dubuque to Shanghai,

Who holds your son in the crock of your armand with your free hand walks me aroundYour adopted second son

Baby boy sick already with sophisticationSick with the consumption of consumption

You gently walk with meMother walk away from the bad places to the light

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Mama who laughs at my pretencesPierced heart Mother laugh

Sounds like Gods laughLaughing at all that comes with the nightA laugh

That dries my tears and tears down the fencesMade with the clapboards of fear ofMy preordained schedules of inanity

That stunt my growthAnd lay the spores

That grow in the chambers of my heartInto a primordial fungus of soul insanityWhich covers over with silly scalesEyes made to see the sun.

Created by your sonTo see where I have been called to run.

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Tethered GoatBen Wilensky

Call it three before the lightor three inside the daywhen spatial negativity comes rushing by

to rattle my ship,squeeze my sanity.

The heaving deck is pitch black,obliterating surface from interior,wiggling fingers in front of my face.

The soul cries out in panicked comedywhen knives are primed for pulsing meat,

the loss of life,the force of tragedy.

The spit of the sea is the hiss of a predatorsearching for prey.Warmer now,

ten degrees warmer than thatwhen I hear the cry of a tethered goat.Sweet stench clogs the air.

Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, hyperventilating,

fit to be tied. Pressure is up. Pulse is down.Pain is quite exquisite. Literally, I can leapinto the bloody ink of Isaacs sorceryand disappear.

Sky is breaking.Waves are calm.

Time to cast my nets and troll for bottom feeders.Function replaces fantasy,

reduces the play.

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Amused and chilled to the bone,

I go below to meditate on whiskeys burning hell,

as I eat lobster,

squirming in its shell.

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InvaderBen Wilensky

Sleek

stainless steel,she changes speed and massas if she were a sorceress.

Impervious to river tot and termite time,she glides through vines and

cul de sacsblaring music,colored lights,

for lights and drums attract a crowdalong the Great Yazoo,

Madre DOro,Black Shingu.

Our ship is a murderess,spy for Nomad Khan,hurling tons of fire

high into the topmost trees.

We are burning forests to the ground,

cleansing them

for browsing sheep.

A slow witted slothlooks into the eyesof old friends roasting in the heat,

their fearful shapesquivering in the smoke.

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After Rush HourGeoff Stevens

Street lights bleed into the darkness,diffuse light like seed clocks,dandelions losing alpha-particles

into passing time.

The rain is greasy, oils everything.

Cars and buses stop, then trundlebetween dying rows of department stores,their eyes gone out.

13 and 74 stencil sharplyinto the front of slow passing buses.

They are cut with precision;everything else is blurred.

This window is shedding tears.We sit in its brain,which has ceiling lights

that flutter in sequence with the thunder.

Someone is walking through it,

carrying a ham cob,which is tightly wrinkled in clingfilm,

with pink meat pressing its tongue against it.

Waiting here is flat, lifeless, and dull.I drink it down like warm beer

and it fills up again with the same.Brain signals glisten like cigarette ends.

I get a message which says thatI am going to be late home for dinner.I dial the same old number

and a voice, as dry as ovened gravy, puts me on hold.

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CaspianGeoff Stevens

Suicidal, youve often though of drowning

and the cobalt mirrors that create a triptych of yourself

have cost a fortune.

You immerse yourself in them, each night, before you go to bed.

They hold three neon-blue images of the bedroom light,and your arms move like lazers in them

as you remove your earrings,that glisten like blue ice.

An electric, blonde shock of highlights crackles within it,as you teasel with silver-backed hairbrushes.

You remove your (purple-in-the-mirror) bright-red lipstickand Prussian Blue eye-shadowusing cotton buds of baby-blue and a bladderwrack-brown lotion,

before you slip out of your clothingand sit there with black nipple-smudges on your bluebell breasts,

and your pubic hair as lively as hungry mauve sea-anemones.

Flanked by your perfume bottles,phallic and cut glass, engorged with indigo,you see your bed, behind you, waiting for a lover.

Some nights you bring back some hulk to keelhaul with your wants,and to cling to when you are drowning

in the intense Adriatic blue impulsations of orgasm,that wash over you while circling gulls are screaming take me,

deep down in the salt water fathoms of your psyche.

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An Ending To ItRobin Ford

You left no messageyou will not come backI have learnt this.

Even if you returnedand crossed the samethreshold you would not

enter the same room.

If your form were to appear

framed by lintel and architravemy heart would sicken, shrinkshed its blood, squeeze mouse

like under skirting boards.

Love or mania-like this

bows under its own weightleaves rupture, puddlesof red mud. Think of me

felled then file that imagefor the future. I knowyou will not

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Quilted MindsHP

what happensbetween the spaceof my mind

that no one else sees

desire and lust

to name but a feware these

Within this spacean explosionthoughts, verbs,

scatteredonto the quiltof paper minds

and whentheres nothing

then I write

as nothing

can becomea cascade

of my mind

edit and re-editbut soon

theres nothing leftbut is that notwhat lies between

the spaceof quilted minds

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Who Am IHP

Who am IA roseA thorn

A spec on the carpet of lifeinsignificantAnd yet

when joined by othersI becomeA part of a great voice

that can heal, save livesMake a differencein this world

So who am IdependsOn who stands beside me

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CleansedHP

Washed in the tearsof those that lay dyingit takes strength to walk away

IndemnifyingYou dont have to fightto prove youre strong

even sanctioned killingsare sometimes wrongFrom twisted commands

to blood stained handsWashed in the tearsof the dead and dying

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Apple TreeNigel Coles

Love is like an apple treeIt starts growing from a seed you see

Planted in your lovers head

You can watch it grow, I have heard it saidA small apple tree starts to grow

With leaves and branches, ever so slow

The same as love, it grows strongerObvious consequences, making it last longerA blossom appears at the end of the branch

Love is flourishing, given the chanceThe fruit we have mentioned, starts to growThe branches get heavy, and start to bow

Like a couple you sow your seedThe same process has started, yes indeed

The fruit drops and the harvest is in

The apples are collected up in a binThe same goes for the baby thats dueFruit of the lions, I have heard this too

So, from a seed, a tree, a blossom, an apple grows

Its called the apple tree of love I knowFor I have been there and sown a seed

And experienced all that love indeed

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DolphinsNigel Coles

Dolphins are said to be a sign of loveI suppose likewise goes for a white dove

But swimming with dolphins, is said to be

A loving feeling, from within the seaThey are a sign of safety, love and beauty

When someones in danger, they always seem to do their duty

They have a healing effect on children that are illMaybe they tickle them with their billWherever you are, out there, in a boat

At the bow you can elegantly see them floatWith that beauty and elegance in every wayYou could stay there watching them all day

So dolphins are surely, what they are made out to beBeautiful angels from within the sea

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HeartNigel Coles

My love for you, is deep in my heartOf its weight, I would sadly let it part

Because I am filled to the brim, with all this love for you

A release is what I need, what can I do ?I feel my heart, is about to explode

My bloods pumping that fast, my veins erode

So please tell me you love me likewiseThis may reduce my heart back to the right size

Synchronise your heart, to beat with mine

This way our hearts will beat on timeYou see, cupids fired that arrow at me

He wants me to hang out with you, you see

Give me your heart, and I will store them togetherThis way our love will last forever

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Who Lost the Love FileWill Daunt

Hallo, come in. Ive forgotten your name.No. Dont tell me now, its somewhere on screen,With your details and oh dear, what a shame

Ive deleted the life where your folder had been.

You registered late, I attempted to fit

any profile which proved you were out of my hands.Our recycle bin is preparing to splitwith thousands like you no one else understands.

There might be a space I could turn into yours,in stacks or the card files beyond the alarms.

Theres somewhere beyond here and through the baize doors here is the password, now creep out of harm.

Thats how she spoke every speck of the trip,while one more small part of him died in the chip.

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The HarrowingFrancis Spencer

Three days we harrowed Paradise:the graveclothes lay unfolded

by the bed. How simple it all

is. The room, your hair,the river sounding by .

Our hands reached into the sideof the world. Its eyes

are soft as eggs. And nowhere

underneath the skin isanything but this We lied

when on the third day we appearedto hang again, like dutiful defeated

thieves, on those dead trees,

to cover up this savagerywith smiles and cries of dereliction.

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Athwart HimFrancis Spencer

Athwart him andhis waters, she:

I want to bear

your child

shivering

triumphant gift.

Woman. This one.

No-one else.Unbuttoning

his grief

as the terror of manis broken.

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In the ForestFrancis Spencer

Following each othernaked as the trees

Into our no-mans land,

the edge of the woodwas all around us

Winter and our breathsnow-laden, blossomed

overhead in pillars

of white fireWe followed our words

like a god

And there was time hereand tall bones

a misery of airand the skeletons of children

growing vast in death

Their silence covered

everything asInfinitely small we too

grow white and softcrushing the snow

with love

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PretenceFrancis Spencer

Let us pretend in this small roomand on this room-shaped paper

that we

can walk out naked under the treesor fly to Prague on a train

that we

are virgins still in factnot just in rediscovery

and that

the hours we press together herewill turn to years like wine

Let us pretend because its truewe do not like being false

that our

eyes are not watching usfrom other lives or rooms

that we

do not have children thereor boughs weve ripened on

and that

they unlike us, arent walking

loves white stick

Let us pretend to make believeto make love, to make waves

that One daycomes, that Ill leave mineshould you leave yours

that wellget over somehow their

not getting over itand that

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thats what we even wantto make a life in time

If not, let us pretendthese sheets are blank

and thatfor instance, we are nottwo had and eaten cakes

or thatI do not love you even

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AbsenceFrancis Spencer

After love we drew the counter-pane all around us; sittingcross-legged by the window, were

a Buddha with two heads.

Usually we talk. I know

that you exist then becauseI can see the words go rufflingthe fine hair on your neck.

This time we are only breathing,but I still know we exist because

the glass that separates us fromout there, its wandering headlights

and our lives, has misted blindlyover. But is it true, my silence,that we can only know this when

we cannot see ourselves

or see the world see us ?

For when your hand crept outof our two-headed idol,

whether to wipe the pane clean

or to wave, absence fledbetween like a knife.

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Encounters with the ShadowSean Woodward

from a bright summer's daythe shadows are new prominenceson the rim of the morning sun

- crow feathers and burnt moons

in the cut-off moments

as black as the turning instantbetween all you know

and all that can change.

I kept your name

the exact number of eclipsesof moon and sun

of mood and funless moment.

I kept chained the ghetto atrocitiesof speech and broken thought

of each way and methodyour stratagems mappedout those tired black lands of torture.

I stand now, as ever, watching

new encounters with the shadowwatching him stepped from an alchemist's glassa Gollum decked all in gold and finery

holding nothing but liesand anothers crooked shadowcast from the past upon him

waiting, flickering

unseen.

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Massachusetts AutumnSean Woodward

Harry,

You always appeared exhaustedwhen calling spirits -

your daughter's vanished -

your neighboursin the Baltimore Hotel

were very LA, very quick to say

anything that would take

the edge away.

That day in 1926 you had wishedfor a great escapeonly now is it

that we are watching and waiting,second-guessing the secret tradeof magicians, played out

in the dark shouts

of childrenof owls on church lytchgates.

A crowd gathers as we await

your illusive infamacymixed in its own alchemists mist

in this Massachusetts autumnin the midst of this storm.

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I see a spiders webbridging death with its illusion

of deft construction.

And ten circled words

are spoken in smokey dewpicked from the threads of life and death.

Conan-Doyle and Houdini

what it was they knewto come throughthis seventieth time

this Halloween night, Nineteen Ninety Six.

Once more I walk within the lines.Once more I talk with him of other times.

That someone would uncover the crimesof Innsmouth, of the blindarab who led me here

waiting for you to appearfrom the back of the faceless crowd

Ii a loud round

of applause.

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The House of HortaSean Woodward

Marble stepsEffortlessly mergeWith the curved spurs of wrought-iron,

Of fingers, in awe pointingTo the staircase landing

Of Hortas organic abode.

I have felt those sea-crest joins,The handrail as smooth

As my lovers skin.

I have walked through doorways

As arched and indistinguishableAs our bodies in given rapture.

Only in silent harmonyDo you begin to seeThe dew-drop symmetries,

The shades of aching flesh,The nouveau mesh of bud and seashell.

Bring me again, lady of the night,Through the cafe laden

Streets of Ixelles.

It is your touch that melts masonry,Composes the once grilled orifices

Into open offerings of abandon.

Gone are the scents of dried floweristry,

Everything is effortlessAs frozen as a moment of Rambles observation

Everything -marble, stone, honed thought -

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Everything

Is how it was meant to be.

Bring me again, daughter of the night

To the House of Horta

To the light of your touch.

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Luckless in the Far CloisterDavid Stone

I marked my place in Plato,Erased my notes of remorse,Surrendered my sorcerers license

And desperately poked the strandTo the applause

Of a choir of horseshoe crabs.

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Cancel Call-WaitingDavid Stone

Reading the ledger of Anubis,Dry-eyed, behind bars,

Counting rhapsodies,Apologizing for pitching streetward,

Scrawny as a dream.

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DivingDavid Stone

from the cliff edgeover a burning ring,wincing,

rotating,stripping,

retreating, restating traumasabove embankments,rinsed seawalls.

vaulting above chimneys,over the stadium wall,grappled to rest

like a rosewood cannonballfuming in the clocktower.

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Evening DropsTimothy Hodor

Tears touchThe tendernessOf others

When theyAre exterior;

But whenThere isNo lightIn their liquid,

They mustMelt intoThe self;

And in thatNocturnal world

The candleOf someMelancholy manBurns in

The midnightOf life.

(Reprinted from Hours in the Orchestration)

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The Crowd of TimeTimothy Hodor

It's hard living in a world --When you feel alienated from your native country,And from the country you live in.

And you feel alienated from the Catholicism

You learned as a child,And from all the religions you know as an adult.

You are a loner, walking in the crowd of time.

The people behind you are dead;The people in front of you aren't born.

How well you know the people around you.Sometimes they bump you. They tell you how well they advance.

You see how well they retreat.

You are a loner,walking in the crowd of time.

(Reprinted from Cyphers)

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23 AprilRoy Clements

Nearby, on the festival of St Georgeat my greening roundabout, a thousandDandelions vehicle poison

all the day and, unperturbed, declaretheir bold gold opinion on it all.

How, then, shall I do less than slaythe dragons in my soul, and smile ?

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No PeaceRoy Clements

There is, without a doubt,peace aplenty for the wicked -why should they be worried ?

It is the right-minded,

conscientious and goodwho lie awake and watchgaunt faces in the dark.Don't proverb them, don't mock.

For they it is who beara neighbour as a brother,who wipe a wound a pay

a price, who stand betweena victim and a foe.

No peace out here, in thisour wasted land, forover there, asleep and

undeterred, the wicked waits.

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UntilRoy Clements

On the ground, fallen,beside Autumn's last dying leaf.This, then, is waiting.

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The Space in Your MindM Pickard

A circle is a line of progressionthat starts at a point in your mindand, having created,

finishes back where it started.To get where you want to go

you have to startfrom where you are

not where you would like to benot where you think you are

not where the othersthink you are.

To get where you'd like to be

and move on from there.You might have to go back

and start at the beginning.You might findthat you split a circleand finish where you started

leaving a perfect moon.

2

you might find

the energy in breaking freefrom the circle of beliefthat constricts and strangles your mindthough it saps your energy

carries you a million milesthrough the space in your mind.

3

You should findthat a healthy unrealistic dreama dream of where you'd like to be

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shoves you along each tottering stepthrough the circle of your mind

takes you quickly throughwhere you'd not like to be.You might find something boring.

You might find something uninterestingsuggested put things togetherfind they complete the circle.

Take a look,closer and closer

at the space in your mind.The more you think,

the bigger it gets.Without the circle, you run the risk

Of becoming lost.With the circle, you run the riskOf going round and round and round.

The enormous energy it takeslaunch yourself from the circle

carries you a million milesthrough the space in your mind.Back to the starting point.

4

Take a look

take a closer lookthe old woman,

wrinkled and sarcasticis she still beautiful?behind the wallof a stuttering pathetic forgetful dependant

lies the invisible, the wise,the mind the person, the awarenessthrust so deeply to the centre

of her being.Into the space of her mind.

To challenge your perceptionsis to break free of the circleto launch yourself

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through the space

in your mind.

5

That should be the endbut a circle never endsend it now

or be sent spinninground and round and round

Everything goes into the push,the leap

that carries you a million milesthrough the space in your mind.

space pushed constantly expandsmind and matter constantly expandsuntil you end up

at the finishback where you started

whether you startedat the beginning or at the end.

6

So that you complete the circleand finish up where you started

like the SunBut the Sun

is not chained to the earththe Earth is chained to the sunsuch a belief shifttakes a major effort

completed, carries you a million milesthrough the space in your mind.

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Elegy For A Poet(for Allen Ginsburg)

Louis S. Faber

You died quietly in your bed without

friends gathered aroundthe car and buses of the cityclattering out a Kaddish

to a God you had long agodismissed as irrelevant.We would have expected

your howl, to decrythe unfairness of it all,but you merely said

it is time, and slipped away.Who gave you the rightto depart without leaving us

one last remonstrationagainst the insanitythat surrounds us, lone last

censure of the foolswho we have so blindly chosento lead a generation

into a hell of our creation.You had your peacebut what of us

left behind, what can welook forward toin your absence

save the words we knowso well, can recite by heartthat no longer beats

in your breast.

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Dream On, My GodLouis S. Faber

Good night, Sisyphustry and get some sleep.It's been a long day

and you already knowthe rock will await you

when you arise in the morning.I suppose by nowyou've come to realizethere is no percentage

in pissing off the Gods.This of this as a personalre-education center

where right thinkingis the lesson of this

and every other day.Did you really thinkthey would let you standin the middle of the Square

openly mockingall of their edicts.Sleep old fellow,

we have all the timein the world, it is

one of the benefitsof immortality.

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Dust and AshesLouis S. Faber

Between Scylla and Charybdisthey cower amidst the ruinsfearful to look skyward

lest they encouragethe rains of hell.

Now and then they visitthe corpses, hastily buriedgrief drowned by the soundof the laugh of the gunner

peering down from the hills.It is always night for the souland lookout must be kept

for Charon, who ridessilently along the rivers of blood,

that flow through her streets.In the great halls,far removed from the horror,self-professed wise men

exchange mapslines randomly drawn,scythes slicing a people.

They trade in lives as chattel,reaping a bitter harvest,

praying there may only bebut seven lean years.They offer a sop to Cerberus,three villages straddling the river,

but the army of the hillsknows they will take that and moreand waits patiently for the winter

when the odour of sanctityno longer arises out of the city

to assail their nostrilsand Shadrach isno more than a ghost.

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ColophonThis issue was sustained by Angela.

Special thanks to David Taub.

Editorial evasion assisted by Typhonian excursions from the realms

of Malkuth, Gravity Winter Games, (Mammoth, California) ; Mont-Sainte-Anne (Quebec), Linkin Park,Kid Rock, Santana, John Mayall,ELO, Papa Roach, Tonic, Black Sabbath, Playstation2, CNN,2000AD, Deepak Chopra and Derek Acorah.

New for 2001evSplushnay Records release the Best Of collection, Gothick and anaudio CD of poetry readings from Dragonheart Press.

splushnayrecords.soundvault.net