A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

This is a beautiful "Barry Hodges" poem.*

Ah, sweet memories of that night in Blarney
In the stout-soaked suburbs of ould Cork City.
How clearly through the mist of alcoholic memory
I recall how we all piled out of Johnny's bar at closing time
****** as a load of proverbial ******* newts;
'Where to now me boys, which bar's still open?'
Shrieked spiflicated Sean O'Shannon
(that's notorious sixteen pints an hour Sean,
the man who won Strictly Come Boozing twice)
As he tottered over to his Pa's new BMW convertible,
Lucky ****** that he is to be son to a Fianna Fáil MEP,
And one not adverse to trousering a Euro or two.

'Sean, me oul' potato, de ye think ye should be driving
With that record-breakin' skinful o' stout
I just seen you put away down your greasy gullet,
Not to mention the quadruple whiskey chaser?'
Enquired loopy Liam O'Lephrechaun as he leaned over
And puked up another gallon of warmish Guinness
Over yours truly as I rolled helplessly in the Ballygrohan road
To the amusement of the gawping bystanders,
Bearing in mind there were a good dozen gobbets
Of half-digested pork scratchings in the froth
Which was causing havoc with my apparel.

So without another feckin' word being spoken
My dear drinking companions and ***** buddies
Left me prostrate and clambered gaily into the waiting car
And roared off into the enchanted Gaelic night;
Singing and smoking themselves silly simultaneously,
So full of the joys of life and the blessed bottle.
And then some ****** stupid American tourist
(doubtless dressed in hideous checked golfing trousers
with a backwards-facing baseball cap on his ugly head,
not to forget his overweight wifey crammed into the front seat
just like a huge white bloated fat-faced hippo),
Came round the next corner in a clapped out rental car
And the two of them got sent to Kingdom-sodding-Come
With a terrible metallic crash which destroyed them completely.

'Oh begorrah and *******, would ye just look at the mess
The feckin eejit's made of me Daddy's Beemer,
And it's his pride and joy so it is to be sure!'
Cried Sean O'Shannon in an alcoholic rage,
As he contemplated the largest insurance claim
In the County Cork for the past six decades,
(at least the largest legitimate one anyway).
Whilst I was trying to get my hipster pants down
To avoid filling them up with beery diarrhoea
Brought on by my involuntary bursts of joyous mirth,
(bejasus, 'twas the second time in the space of a single week
and my new girlfriend was getting a bit fussy about hygiene
bearing in mind she was thinking of taking the veil).

How fortunate old Father Tucker and Garda Sergeant O'Toole
Could both (when they'd sobered up sufficiently)
Testify later from their secure vantage point
In the rear compartment of a nearby parked hearse,
(where they were having a ******* with Deidre,
the filthiest wee **** in the whole South-Western counties)
That the accident was not dear Sean's fault at all, to be sure,
As the other stupid sober yankee ****** was driving at 75
On the wrong friggin' side of the ******' street
Or probably in the middle, come to think of it.
'Sure but Sean's the best driver this side of the Blarney Stone,
And there's no way himself would ever drive under the influence'*
They agreed sagely before going off for another jar or two
And maybe a double knee-trembler with Deidre's fat sister,
One up each of her gaping hair-rimmed orifices.

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that ******* drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
  Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong;
  Come not near our fairy queen.

      Philomel, with melody,
      Sing in our sweet lullaby;
    Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby!
        Never harm,
        Nor spell nor charm,
      Come our lovely lady nigh;
      So, good night, with lullaby.

Weaving spiders, come not here;
  Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
  Worm nor snail, do no offence.

      Philomel, with melody,
      Sing in our sweet lullaby;
    Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby!
        Never harm,
        Nor spell nor charm,
      Come our lovely lady nigh;
      So, good night, with lullaby.

By morning we've got cold amphibious tongues
coated in blubs
waiting bubble eyed.
Still slimy throats
up-gurgle newts and muck.
Moss sprouts from our mouths
and brown coated gums.
Flies quivering between teeth.
Lips dry as salted meat.

The cobbled stones, awash by moon
The drunken laddies that sip and swoon.
To gaze upon the midnight beaut
Would parish ones will to that of Newts.

Thus lady’s hair does fall much like
A waterfall of pure moonlight.
With eyes of jewel and crystal light
Sets ones soul ablaze and heart, bright.

With opulent lips, does she possess
Such voice of tinkling bells distress.
With wisps of silver at loves cheeks
Gold flecks do twinkle at brows peek.

To tame such beauty is hopeless venture
Too many a drunk lad, sweet and tender.
To gaze upon midnights supple dream
Is to be more than merely heard, but seen.

Long long ago                     
In a faraway land
Lived a frog named
Mr. Stikitung Grand

Near a meander
In his little mud house
In rain you could hear him Croak,
Looking for a spouse

Rains came and went
But he never got a single mate
He tried every trick a frog could
Still no one fell for his bait

He would keep
Harnessing his vocals
Polishing his webbed digits and
Perfecting his focal

While his efforts were appreciated
And some found it cute
The girls still went out
With the true frogs, the slimy smooth

With Mr. Grand being so different
All warts and moles
Others wondered how
He would ever father tadpoles

Mr. Grand with his huge eyes
And big mouth could do very little
All these hurdles made Him
Too depressed and shittle

While there were uncertainties
Looming large on his life
Fellow amphibians were betting
On his chances of getting a wife

For termites said the caecilians
Calling others to join the hoot
For worms said salamander and
For cricket said the newt.

On the fateful day Mr. Grand got fed up
And was waiting to call it a night
When he heard a hiss
Loud enough to give him a fright

Hello said the snake why are you
In such a spiritual gloom
Come let us find out someone
Who can help you groom

Frog was surprised at snake’s kindness
And overwhelmed at his warmth
While his kinds were busy ridiculing him
Snakes words soothed him like a balm

At first he was cautious and
Kept a safe distance from the snake
But the snake kept saying he was hurt
That Mr. Grand still took his efforts as fake

I have nothing to lose thought Mr. Grand
And reached out for the help
Yum thought the snake and gulped Mr. Grand
Before he could think or yelp

Salamanders, newts, all of his fellow beings
Saw this but not a single tear was shed
Guess this comes with living a life
So cold blooded

There was a crocodile, who saw it all
Hidden behind a pier
Some say he was the only one who
Did shed some tears.

We all piled out of the pub
****** as a load of newts;
'Where to now boys?'
Bellowed naughty Niall O 'Neill
(that's notorious nineteen pints a night Niall)
As he tottered over to his Pa's Rolls Royce.

'Do ye think ye should be driving
With that record-breakin' skinful
I just seen you put away?'
Enquired serious Sean slurringly
From his slightly inconvenient
Viewpoint in the beery gutter.

So we all clambered gaily into the car
And roared off into the enchanted night
And then this ****** stupid clodhopper
Who didn't even have his driving licence yet
Came round the next corner in his Ford
And got sent to Kingdom-sodding-Come.

'Oh ****, would ye just look at the mess
The oul' fella's made of me Daddy's car,
And it's his pride and joy so it is!'
Cried Niall O'Neill in incandescent rage,
As he surveyed the largest insurance claim
In the County Wicklow for twenty years.

How fortunate Father Tucker and Garda Sergeant O'Toole
Could both testify from their vantage point
In the front seat of the devastated Roller,
The accident was not Niall's fault at all, at all,
As the other stupid sober ****** was on
The wrong side of the ****** street.

It would be so wonderful to be loved
to have someone to hold me close
to trust them implicitly
to give me hope and liberty

Would that be much to ask
to find someone that would love me
yet I dwell in the back waters of despair
where only newts and frogs on lilies care

My marshland so cold, with razor blade reeds
the squeaking of mice that fall by the waters edge
drowning and sinking
to the dark depths

Do not pity me
for I am a creature of the swamp
and will forfeit my desires
I will always want

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

© 2011 NeonSolaris (All rights reserved)

are salamanders
regrow lost limbs and organs
lounge in cool shade, newts

Through hazy , seasoned myopic eyes all the sights and sounds of woodland creatures do enchant and amaze !  Robins relay the message of my presence , White tailed deer barely render a nod and continue to graze ..
Fall Georgia skies painted by the renaissance artist , chilled zoysia and fescue cools the feet of the timid , skeptical albeit grateful introvert ..
Dirt roads pretend to run forever this morning , playful Sun hides like the gifted actress , behind gray blankets ! Resolute .. Cunning ..
White Pines bear witness to the active forest , Eastern gray squirrels signal impatiently , awaiting the call of Winter ..
Random thoughts collect like silver rainwater pools , virtual bastions of aquatic life that dot the landscape , olive brush strokes , red Maple swirls , prolific Water Oaks recall young boys in search of newts , mud puppies and tadpoles ..
Songbirds hide within briar thickets performing their daily song list for all that would give ear , rock bass and bream gorge on a bounty of white flies served by the morning breeze .. The pond is a looking glass today , sharing her piece of colorful sky for childlike imaginations such as mine , tiny frogs providing musical accompaniment with glorious song while Angelic host incessantly highlight her surface with gentle blue and green hues , soft tones ..

My Lord, screamed the monkey
in the yellow whimsical suit
amphibious tests biological checks
micro bot techno ready, to compute

The city became slightly slimy
frogs fell like rain from skyscrapers
the slums turned into theme parks
green and sticky seats to hop on

Swamp flowers grew in shadows of lamp posts forgotten
and by each one, a trio of lying toads waited for weeping moths
small newts stepped aside for the great crested kind
giant tadpoles ate news vendors and papers till that time was lost

Now all is marshland
those Humans are under way
under the lilies, under peat
they had their chance, they had their day

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

She liked Jim's Jam
so sweet and thick
it was like little lumps of heaven
on top of toast
or scones
warm and crispy
like logs in a fire
newts on a fume
charred and musky
she liked a lot about Jim-
his smile, his laugh
but not his sads
so really
she didn't like Jim
not all of him
but enough for some happies
yummy Jam
fires and smoke
hair like a wolf

YOU spotted snakes with double tongue,
   Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong;
   Come not near our fairy queen.

Hello tree people, kings, figs and newts,
We delight inexplicably, mice and toads!
Under loud moons that wreak of pools,
Before greasy footsteps into knights and lions.
And loudly dwindles the extreme crown pig,
The reality hardship of all sun and crowd.
Forgotten mishap rulers that apply inch worms,
And a staff of quails, jesters, and pawns.
Sence to sentances, prison rain druming, squeeks.
Filthy boring evaporating with kangaroo shorts,
Cut half tall.

What you got in the fires
it smells
what demonic creations of bombastic heatheness is brewing?
I mean, Hell, what poems you got stewing?
Are you weaving nymph tails into virgins?
chanting in a pointy hat?
What is in that double double cauldron bubbling?
Up those sheepskin cloaks and plaid twills
are eye of newts? tails of bat? hair of dog?
What herbs are you hiding?
You, you pagan goddess, in the mist  of your fire
are the stars and control of the morning.
I knew it.
You are brewing
Olde English "800".

Down in the garden where moonlight doesn't reach,
the water is boiling with embracing couples.
Slithering and submerging, surfacing, sinking again
in their alligator rolls, legs pushing, touching others and veering away.

Not yet Beltane but the drive is strong and urgent,
they meet once a year in this fecund rite, old hands and new.
How long they seem to stay beneath the water,
skimming the bottom where smooth newts bide their time
gliding in lithe figures of eight.

Back on the surface throaty voiced princes, hands spread upon their lover's shoulder,
stare into space at either side and sigh all hours of the night.

Tomorrow in warm sunlight they will spread, replete
upon their tapioca pillows dotted with new life.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           A Tribute to Gussie Fink-Nottle

                From an idea suggested by W. K. Kortas

Now be ye all upstanding, and charge your drinks
And let us lift a glass of orange juice
To all inebriated newt fanciers
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

And of all inebriated new fanciers
None is fancier than Gussie Fink-Nottle
None better with the newts, none worse with the girls
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

God bless the newts in Trafalgar fountain and pool
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

By: Cedric McClester

The poor get poorer everyday
And corporations have their way
Congress seems to have no sway
While lobbyist hold them at bay
We are tired of bein’ clowned
And told that wealth trickles down
That rationale's proven unsound
Because it never reaches ground

Things have gotten too far gone
Our lives have been reduced to ****
And most of y’all ain’t even torn
Tell me what the hell is goin’ on

The Constitution’s been destroyed
Our troops are always redeployed
We now do what we should avoid
Cos terror’s has us paranoid
And here’s the thing I always feared
Once your name has been smeared
There's no chance of it being cleared
And you can literally be disappeared

Things have gotten too far gone
Our lives have been reduced to ****
And most of y’all ain’t even torn
Tell me what the hell is goin’ on

One percent have all the loot
While ninety-nine shines their boots
And Congress appears in cahoots
With history majors like the Newts

Things have gotten too far gone
Our lives have been reduced to ****
And most of y’all ain’t even torn
Tell me what the hell is goin’ on

Job creators? Where they at?
I just see ‘em getting’ fat
It’s high time they come to bat
And lay those jobs out on the mat
But fat chance that just won’t happen
Long as most of us are nappin’
Pretty soon we’ll all be strapping
And our guns will soon be clappin’

Things have gotten too far gone
Our lives have been reduced to ****
And most of y’all ain’t even torn
Tell me what the hell is goin’ on

The poor get poorer everyday
And corporations have their way
Congress seems to have no sway
While lobbyist hold them at bay
We are tired of bein’ clowned
And told that wealth trickles down
That rationale’s proven unsound
Because it never reaches ground

Cedric McClester, Copyright (c) 2016.  All rights reserved.

Whenever I went with winsome Kate
She’d say, ‘I’m a witch, and that,’
And while in bed, with love in my head,
All she would do was chat.
She’d chatter about the latest spell
She’d found in her old Grimoire,
While I would lie, and dream of her thighs
And hope she’d surprise me there.

And so she did, a number of times
Each time that I’d reach for her,
Like shifting sand, I’d find in my hand
A handful of ***** fur,
The black cat under the counterpane
Would wriggle and spit and scratch,
And I’d withdraw, away from its paw
I’d find it more than a match.

Then she’d go on about frogs and spawn
While up above in her flat,
And hanging down from her ceiling fan
The nastiest looking bat.
‘I hope that’s not going to drop on us,’
I’d say, but she didn’t care,
It often lay on her pillow case
All tangled up in her hair.

‘Wouldn’t you like to make witching love?’
I’d say to her, in despair,
While she would lie, with spells in her eye
And some that would really scare.
She said she needed to concentrate
And would make some terrible moans,
They seemed to come from the mantlepiece
Where she kept a pile of bones.

She called them Fred, he was certainly dead
And he stared at us from above,
She’d cry, and say that there was a day
When he was her one true love.
But he’d fallen into her pickle jar
One day, when casting a spell,
And she’d pulled him out, too late, no doubt,
He’d pickled his way to hell.

I bid farewell to my witching one
Before I suffered his fate,
I’d prayed for love to heaven above
Knowing it was too late.
She’d filled a cauldron with toads and newts
Then turned and reached for my hand,
But I had fled, the moment she said,
‘Now all I need is a man!’

David Lewis Paget

Kentucky nights bring stillness
but not silence

tranquility shrouds creatures of the night
their symphony betrays that.

Grasshoppers and crickets chirp ceaselessly
microorganisms making music of magnitude

introducing dusk to night
with unintelligible cheering.

Timid critters make their presence known
using the anonymity of darkness

raccoons and opossums wail in the distance
their cries aren’t a call to action but a wild expression

they could be dying—they could be giving birth
it’s always one or the other.

Vulnerable bellowing brings out the dogs
for a canine crescendo

projecting power into the air
raised hackles raise spontaneous barking

echoing through the ravine
alerting newts and neighbors alike.

The noise is paused as dogs are brought inside
the faint murmur of scolding replaces them

like an aria without an aside
the air is still again

until a pack of coyotes complete the satz
finding their prey as the night’s finale.

The World turns and we ride it
She accepts her offspring
Loves Newts and Human Beings.

And we forget her day by day
caught up in our affairs.
Us Newts and Human Beings.

Cynical Town,
knocking houses down
to be made in flats,
except when there's a colony
of crested newts.

A thwarted town regeneration,
tombstones of empty shops.
Voting on the 5th May
for a consensual mayor
Goodbye Labour,
you have unnerved Croydon.

Sometimes you want
to drink monkshood, dust to dust-
ashes to ashes.

*

Creditability in half-moon
fails. There was fierce battle
for new algorithm.

*

I wanted to know,
who you are in the jungle
of beautiful newts.

A pipe stands
In the corner of a small courtyard
Bounded by a low wall
It overlooks a lawn
Which runs down to a pond
Filled with sticky lumps of frog spawn
Newts dart out from under leaves
And with slithery darts of their tongues
They catch and swallow their prey

The pond is cradled by a path
Which leads up to a thicket of oak trees
The fruit of which crumbles and crunches
Under our boots as we skip and jump
To the swings,
It is dusk now and with whoops of laughter
We run through the gate
Just before it is locked shut by the park keeper
Who smiles and says goodnight
Boiled eggs under felt cosys
Await with toasted, buttered soldiers
We chuckle at The Clitheroe Kid,
Oak leaves and grass stick to the bath
As the water gurgles away.
One by one each of us stands
On the wooden box next to the sink
Swaddled with warm towels
As we brush our teeth
I pull on my pyjamas
A song plays in my head
‘What do you want if you don’t want money?’
The sheets are cold but the heavy blankets bring warmth
And a sense of safety as the music in my head
Lulls me to sleep
“What do you want….
…if you don’t want dough?”

I wake in the night
My legs are stiff with age
I turn in my bed
And I remember
A tear drops on to my pillow
My body sinks as again sleep overtakes me
The dream is over now
But the song continues
“Wish you wanted my love baby…..”

In the morning,
I have forgotten that I was….
That I was……….where was it, now?
No, it’s gone.
Never mind,
One day, I may go there again

The skies and trees are sown in falling leaves ,
their branches thimbles break .
And so the moon takes back this hour my dear old granny. spake .

So each cloud that passes O  is filled with spite and hate ,
and every sunlit boat that crosses every lake ,
is my every thought that dreamers make ,
and  dreams I’m not too late .

Yet  the skies are growing darker ,
and your boat is yet as far ,
and so  my dreams of seeing you are now hidden. by a star .

But Granny’s words my old gran read when I was just a kid ,
spoke of crystal streams and dancing nimphs as the sun caught my eyes .
along with all the things she said .
So along with the many books she read ,
she sung a lullaby .

And so we went a fishing in nets to catch frogs and toads and newts.,
and granny said “ one day you will catch a lady ,
just like you caught that newt “

So I still dream of paradise and all the love she might bring ,
and prayed those darkened clouds won’t cause her boat to sink .

That’s why I’m standing by this pond all alone ,
awaiting for my paradise ,
a falling star ,
holds many dreams ,
and a nimph to show me how far.