noisy carrefour
our conversations drown
in the melee
deep blue eyes sweaty skin shining pectorals summer heat lashing out young lust
a lifetime later
salt and pepper emotional quotient intellectual wordless conversations silent wars cerebral love
just the sound
of tinkling windchimes
logical moon
Mona Bedi
Ice on the tooth brush, freezing bed sheets, everything as fuel, old shoes, lino. Fear of school, corporal punishment, six-of-the-best on each hand. Hands reddened, burning. Fear of the confessional – Bless me Father for I have sinned. A dance too soon with death. Windowless slavery of five-year apprenticeship, a printer’s devil, lead-stained fingers, forty-year pension. Escape from prescribed monotony. Pubs replacing churches. Revolutionaries. Marxists, Nihilists, like-minds, a book in the pocket, Turgenev, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, lost souls, smell of weed, incense, posh girls, artists flinging colours, Bach heightening. Gigs and reels. A dance with life, my face against her fall of hair, bodies closing in on curves.
Gerry McDonell
If you are just about done making beetroot foam, maybe we can get our heads good and blown up.
a full beard
of mash and gravy
x-mas party
Mikael Kales
Rules, I hate them
and they should die.
Kati Mohr
I’m waiting. No post for a day or two so perhaps there’ll be something. I’m not expecting much but you never know. I’ve heard of letters arriving decades after they were posted. The road remains blank as an unwritten page. Just a pale space between ruled dark lines . Then suddenly it comes past the window before you can say Miss B with her blackboard rubber. One of those slates where the chalk makes a sound that can put your teeth on edge. She was writing some sums and the next moment she was there by the window pointing. It all comes back like one of those missives arriving from over the years as clear as black and white.
first swift
a high pitched squeak
lost on the wind
Diana Webb
Outside yet inside the place for supplies, it offered the food of a different nature. I circle-danced round it at sight of a celandine, the season’s first bluebell in chimes of assent through the soil beneath. A live singing sculpture with bird notes through veins in the sheen of its copper. But now I hear years of creation unsung and unsculpted. Percussive machines deafen foliage’s touch against foliage below. Screech upon screech of the slice of a saw severs ring upon ring of arboreal years. It drowns out for always the cello bow twilight oblique over leaves. After they’ve gone, all it was, distant traffic…
car park
for supermarket shoppers
the prices we paid
Diana Webb
The man sat smugly on the bus, holding a framed picture on his knees. He decided to hang it in the hall so that visitors would admire his good taste. He stood on a chair. His young daughter handed him a crooked nail.
– What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
His wife handed him a knife with a heavy steel handle.
– What’s this? Christ, I’m living with two idiots!
He tapped the nail into the plaster, then hung the picture on the nail, biting the knife between his teeth.
– And now for the coup de grass (sic).
He hit the nail hard and the whole lot came crashing down.
– Jesus Christ, it’s destroyed!
He grabbed his overcoat from the hall stand and left the house. His wife and daughter allowed themselves a little titter. However, they knew there would be hell to pay when he came home from the pub, ugly drunk.
splinter of glass
in the lino –
drawing blood
Gerry McDonnell
Janey was a stableman’s daughter. Swished her tresses from her face.
Lizzy, Alexa and Fanny her sisters in paint were clearly seen. And she was a good woman too.
stitches
chain and whipped back
lazy daisy and feather
Janey was a stableman’s daughter. Swished her dresses round her waist.
Proserpine, Astarte Syriaca, Mnemosthene, she embodied the three of them wrapped in green. And she was a good woman too.
chain and whipped back
stitches
lazy daisy and feather
Janey was a stableman’s daughter. Swished her silks for a flower in place .
Lucrece, Hyppolita, Helen of Troy, all from her needle sewn on a screen.
And she was a good woman too.
lazy daisy and feather
chain and whipped back
stitches
Janey was a stableman’s daughter. Swished her affections without a trace.
Lizzy, Alexa and Fanny her sisters in paint were clearly seen .
And she was a good woman too.
chain and whipped back
stitches
lazy daisy and feather
…
NB: Jane Morris (nee Burden)was a model for many pre-raphaelite painters
Diana Webb
the other bunny 