View Issue vol 6 no. 9
ISSN 2369-6516 (Print)
ISSN 2369-6524 (Online)
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Paul Healy – The Primal Prance
Jari-Matti Helppi – Whatcha Gonna Do?
Christopher Henningsen – What a Man Wants
Scott Lynch – a singular lunch
David R. MacLean – Alice Has Come Home
Ryan Taylor – Mustard passed across the dinner table
Michael Wohlfahrt – Doubting Thomas
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What a Man Wants
Poem by Christopher Henningsen
I don’t need it to mean anything
I just want to be obsessed
I don’t need you to love me
I just want to feel blessed
Loving God is a feat of strength
My neighbors, too diffuse
I want to save my love for you
I want a living muse
And when you feel too shallow
And you loving looks are worn
And my walls feel insurmountable
And the silence can’t be borne
Your heart must keep its pieces
I’ll be the first to say
“It could have been much worse, she never
Loved me anyway.”
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Feelings Change
Poem by Abbey Kelly
Just because the feelings are
in the moment doesn’t mean
they are not valid
Don’t say you
never liked them
You did then
Feelings change
That time was not ‘wasted’
If it was what you wanted
Time is never ‘wasted’
If you learn from what you’ve done
And keep on improving
The same is with how you feel
It was worth it
You wanted it
You wanted them
Although you may not now
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“Consume me,” he begs
“Destroy my darkness
Mother, mother, your fire burns.”
Gasping, I breathe you instead
And the new life is mine.
He turns from me, unwilling to see
It’s you who feeds the flame.
A blaze cannot relight
the charred bones of a broken home.
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Crusader
Poem by Cathy Hanrahan
History now condemns its crusading knight
Alone he lies shrouded beneath blackened light
Bravery’s bravado just worn armor sheen
rotted corpse still, soldered between
Tarnished glints foul the hoary moonlight,
Deity’s grunge, humanity’s plight
Alabaster tombs are homage to godless disgrace
while in unmarked graves lie the Lord’s displaced
Worlds torn apart guised as sacrifice
deceitfully divined through Almighty Christ.
Centuries later the lord’s knight slumbers alone
Forever entombed in sin stained white stone
Society reprises this horrific shame
Genocide over and over again
Jihad, Inquisition, Crusade and Holocaust
Immoral leaders dealing grievous cost
Gruesome wrongs, adjudged glorious and right
Iniquitous souls, immoral fight
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The Primal Prance
Poem by Paul Healy
Cool feet walk on a silver beach:
Marking out time as the waves bob and reach.
Each one lapping and rolling over each.
The murmur of the universal primal niche
The skies are thunder,
The rocks all stiff,
They challenge and defy
But they play the riff
Of the wildsongs dance.
So grab your chance,
To hear the chord and dischord
Of the primal prance
The wind is howling
The sea is scowling
The trees dance madly
Till it slowly subsides… then…
Cool feet can walk on a silver beach
With a mind in the clouds
And the stars within reach.
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HMCS
Poem by Edward Martins-Berki
The ocean winds flex’d and form’d,
Falling on the drifting ship.
Mighty hands of clouds had storm’d:
Clasping, creasing, crushing – rip.
Rivets plucked like pins windblown,
Whisking welded metal wrought.
Billowing, the barge was thrown,
‘Til beneath the water brought.
Since destroyed the vessel lays,
Churning wood into debris,
Hull and whole the boat decays,
Proudly serving her country.
Though the bow tastes frothy wave,
The ensign continues brave.
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Backwards Flows
Writing Forward
Understood After
Its Importance Is Unimportant
Crap Floating Uphill
After The Storm
Raised The Levy
Was It The Weather?
Then Again Men Of Small Minds
Often Build Towers
Only For Short Moments
Their Waves Of Importance
Forgotten To The Passing Hour
Forward Filling Into Sand Traps
Backwards Moving Hands
Waiting For The Tide To Shift
Better Could Be Sooner Maybe
If Too Much Crap Breaches
The Emotions Of Your Eyes
Run For High Ground
Backwards Flows
Writing Forward
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scissorbill
Poem by Brian Dockal
man i am
nothing i am
ode to the shiva divine
born a criminal
my sex, ha, probatum
not a well kept secret
i am
gender profane
jumping box to box
i am man
no, not this time
i am sacred candy
perched on stiletto
wretched skin bag and all
dressed up in folly
often
salad days
lost
to incendiary cat calls
not slicing me nice
first bite of submission
already masticated
even that gobbet of cherish,
ha,
nothingness
to a man
i am
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This I Dream
Poem by Erica Lewis
In ebon stillness of the night,
I enter and become the dream;
your hidden heart, the silver light,
outshines the rays of moons unseen.
I’ll whisper verses in your ear,
lay books I wrote upon your chest;
though far I am, I’m likely near,
I bid you this enchanted rest.
As raindrops newly touch the ground,
and summoned stars begin to weep,
at my behest, make ne’er a sound,
and this I dream to bless your sleep.
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Many die of stairs. “Bill” was one
on Father’s Day, solstice, grandson
just baptized, Stargardt’s, sun’s
dazzle, one wrong turn,
head first to hard basement floor and done.
The Hydrostone has explorer streets.
Stanley knew Stairs, Haligonian
merc worked for white King Leopold
against black King Msiri:
check & mate.
Less than two weeks remained
of Smith’s prophetic window.
Stairs grabbed Moroni’s gold trumpet,
blasted apart the Seventh Seal,
loosed Conrad’s horror.
That horror,
the Horror,
tens of millions dead,
Stairs before he was thirty,
more Tutsi Hutu every month.
Bill died a blind Icarus,
but who in hell was Merkel?
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Alice Has Come Home
Poem by David R. MacLean
Alice has come home from a walk-about,
a tentative swim in the sea of mayhem,
discovered the trick of staying afloat.
Alice has come home from her adventure,
a walk on the wild-side, a mercurial ride,
found that the meal wasn’t up to the lure.
Alice has come home and is glad to be
supported and safe, instead of a waif,
alone and afraid in shark-filled seas.
Alice has come home, her way more clear,
to start life anew and free,
to be happy with family;
we’re so thankful she’s here.
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Fear can be healthy.
Fear can be safe.
Fear can cut you into
pieces.
Fear can make you a
coward.
Fear can stop you
from living.
Fear is just a word.
Fear is something, that
you need to overcome.
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Brag Talk
Poem by Elzy Taramangalam
I’m a stingray
I can put the hurt
On any one I want.
You have just one
But I, bristled the red lion
Fish full of poison barbs
Not finishing the boast.
Ha – I am the great
White shark who eats
All ye like Halloween candy.
Szz I’m the sea snake
Come near and die
A slow death I dare.
Attention down here
Calls the cone snail
I am no snail mail
But the opposite I promise
Instant demise on arrival.
Puny me I better get out
Hold on to mirth, ply my head and heart
Mumbled the kid floating on a fever dream.
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Social Judgments
Poem by Jamil Adas
Judgments will turn us monsters
Monsters that don’t want to foster
A co-existential concept
Let’s strive to try and offset
The hatred that’s in our conscience
We rise yet we are bound to falter
(Human) Nature in a minuscule nutshell
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a singular lunch
Poem by Scott Lynch
what could a would be
poet do
eating lunch beside a frozen stream
skeletal trees naked and
ankle deep in snow
while nothing but a sharp breeze
disturbs the cold tranquility
patient
as a raucous raven
arrives to preen and proclaim
in the tangle of nearby trees
what would a poet write
to describe the haunting pronouncements
of this jet symbol of native lore
or the quality of cold
the subtle dancing of leafless maple and birch
the web like symmetry of every reaching branch
the peculiar position of pine
occasional flurries settling
from a grey flannel sky
whatever could a poet add
of consequence
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Mustard passed across the dinner table
Poem by Ryan Taylor
and all
has come to me
as if in a dream
deja vu
of all my life
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Doubting Thomas
Poem by Michael Wohlfahrt
If you love me
said Thomas
Let me finger all your holes.
If you want me to love you
said Thomas
Let me finger all your holes.
I want you inside me
said Thomas
but I need to be inside you.
If you want to be inside me
said Thomas
Why is it so weird for me to be in you?
Will it hurt?
said Jesus.
Will there be blood?
said Jesus,
Will we still be friends after?
said Jesus.
I do not know
said Thomas
Just don’t let your dad find out.
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Whatcha Gonna Do?
Poem by Jari-Matti Helppi
There they are.
A ne’er do well and rapscallion
in a brouhaha over
three canoodling trollops
shooting Whiskey Jacks
with blunderbusses
while a knave and a miscreant rogue
plotted plans with a hooligan
whose pockets were being picked
by a scalawag and his scamp
with a trick of timing
taught them by a scoundrel
with a gun.
Open Heart Forgery 
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