Her World
(by Andy Cash)
She had shown him a new world
Feral, sensual and wild in beauty
Flying free, a forever butterfly, in a new Eden
Yet he was now a lost soul
A new Adam alone with femininity
It was her empire to roost
Lust left him in an abstraction of paradise
To age in shameful silence
Mark Sheek’s Oil Painting: The Paranoid Schizophrenia Of Richard Dadd (available for sale)
Siren Song
(by Martin Elder)
She sang the siren song
Until she could sing the song no more
And the song was drowned
The words lost
The trees burned
In the fire of another’s love
Of reckless gain
And her hair falls
In layered strands
Remnants of the finesse of what once was
To strew the land
What’s left of hope has become
A tired empty tear down one side of her face
Whilst the other stares
In vacant disbelief
Trees now denuded of paradise
Stalagmite stumps of make believe
Her lips full and pursed with pregnant words
She cannot sing or speak
Because the words have gone
Not even enough for a lament
All that’s left a final scream
A dying swan
A sound which can never be heard
By those left to walk the land
Heads buried in coats of despair
Because nobody listened
No one really cared
But for her the memory is still there
The memory will always be there
Skies break over moors
(by Randall Horton)
Skies break over moors.
A pale rider on a pale horse,
Looks to suckling,
Not destruction.
The horse faces horror
And rises.
Randall Horton
Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Resurrection Of Napoleon Bonaparte (available for sale)
Wax
(by Nicola Hulme)
Life melts , slips away,
pooling slowly, before cascading
over the edge into decline.
Cooling, hardening, leaving a path,
too soon traced and overlaid
by the next generation.
Once illuminating,
bursting with energy,
flaring and flickering, finding
cupped hands of protection
against the breeze,
spluttering and guttering.
The light now fades,
a naked flame chars
a crumpled wick,
sending up a plume of silvered smoke.
The candle shortening, descends
into oblivion, extinguished.
Is it an endless sleep, oceans deep?
In Karma, do we rise again?
Or, when flame is dowsed
and all is black
does death defeat us?
Darkness and nothing more?
Death welcomes us all; unbiased and inclusive,
Inevitable mortality holds no prejudice.
Some rush towards him,
giving the Grim Reaper a hand.
Others run from him
on supplement and vitamin fuelled treadmills.
The indiscriminate scythe offers strange comfort;
levelling the playing field.
You cannot take my life,
barter or buy it to lengthen your own.
My spark burns until the day I’m snuffed out.
I am grateful for every second.
Just So Greek
(by John F. Keane)
Cassandra’s fractured face seeps into hollowed rock
Quick bow-spray spatters white across spectral seas
Cool effigies dream of thespian victories
Winged artistry, brave hands and tragic sorrows;
Mimetic marble strives at dawn to recollect
Ecstatic festivals and nights of wanton dance
While colours leap from distance, filling us with spring
And pallid plastic dreamscapes with primeval song;
Uncounted species and genera of lost loves
Rise tall and stalk like phobic shadows of dismay
Through trembling phonic moments on forgotten strands
While our new Muse awakens, thumbs sand from her eyes
Takes morning ship to Corinth, eying spindrift waves
Occluding Thracian smiles and foreign faces
Unheeded on her long and voiceless voyage
Towards a distant shore of endless origins;
A few more lines weave Phidian visions taut
With drowning lovers and heroic inference.
Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Wax Cataclysm Of Phoenixes And Unphoenixes (available for purchase)