My adaptations of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Villette, and The Waves have been adopted by three Hollywood directors for the big screen, with Hans Zimmer as the main candidate to write the music themes. My first collection of poetry is a best-seller in numerous countries and in Glasgow there are endless queues before WH Smith.
I plan to purchase with the massive revenue a small cottage overlooking some Scottish lake and a rowing boat that bears my lapdog’s name, away from sirens, bullets and roaring war planes. I also intend on the thirty-first of May to dance away the privations of the last three decades in a club that plays the music of the eighties for my sixtieth year.
The constant wagging of Lucia’s tail terminates my self-hypnosis, taking me back to another bland day for we need to descend and ascend flights of stairs with the absolute absence of electricity. My mouth retrieves its bitter taste. My nostrils quiver with revulsion at the smells emanating from neighbours and cafes. My eyes dread encountering the habitual, banal scenes. The cost of living in daydreams is an extra acrid flavor to fermenting reality.
The Cost of Living in Your Heart
The cost of living in your heart was the rising blood level that swamped my hearth every time your eyes encountered a bonny lass.
It was also draughty with your outdoor style, so much skiing, so many golf rounds, chilling my bones on many lonesome nights.
Your heart accommodated so many rooms, so many corridors and bolted doors, so lavishly furnished with extravagant halls, a labyrinth with no exits, a citadel with rings of moats.
It was always resonating to international news, to the Stock Exchange, to the price of oil, so enterprise had mounted its hallowed throne.
The cost of living in your heart was a sheer waste of my blighted youth.
A Renegade
I was caught with a surplus of dignity hidden between the folds of my brain, with grams of self-respect that exceed the permissible weight, with currents of smuggled passion that the throbs of my heart betrayed, with psychological and emotional treason.
The PBI, Psychological Bureau of Investigation, issued a warning that was stamped on my passport and my ID, a chip was inserted in my wrist to monitor my pulse and inward heat for I was a possible renegade with my inability to hate.
Heroes in the Seaweed
“There are heroes in the seaweed,” Leonard Cohen sang in Susanne, whose shortened form is the name I was given as a new-born, after a character in The World of Suzie Wong.
How can the seaweed whose frailty is an established metaphor conceive heroes who are usually born of mighty gods with lineage, immortality, and some aesthetic form? I always pondered but eventually forgot myself in the poetry and music that enthralled.
Perhaps the ‘in’ refers to their dwelling place, inhabiting the deep with anonymity, performing their miracles and then vanishing without making a public speech to win the masses’ acclaim!
Who are “the heroes in the seaweed” of the twenty-first century “when charity is a coat you wear twice a year,” as George Michael reiterated and pacifists are impotent before the wars that incessantly rage? Hunger is still marching at a strident pace and persecution is competing with the best torture tools of the Medieval Age!
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The chains we forge in life are heavy. The sound and movement of James Hyland as Jacob Marley (Deceased), struggling to breathe, carrying the chains, navigating the stage with such expertise, inviting us to believe that a dead man could walk, talk, and morph into many other Dickensian characters without costume changes, yep, sold! My suspension of disbelief was well and truly suspended for the whole performance. To complement this, Chris Warner, composer and sound designer, added a delicious gothic array of disturbing morgue echoes. Well, what a special way to begin the festive season.
The Crewe Lyceum Theatre staged this terrific production on 5/12/22: A Christmas Carol – As Told by Jacob Marley (Deceased), adapted and performed by multi award-winning actor/writer/artistic director, James Hyland of Brother Wolf Productions. Established in 1998, Brother Wolf Productions is an award-winning company whose previous successes include the acclaimed 5-star monodrama, Jekyll & Hyde. The company has produced award-winning theatre, TV, film, and radio productions, including numerous nationwide tours at other prestigious venues in the UK, such as the Royal Albert Hall, the Alban Arena, St George’s Hall, the Stockport Plaza, and the Leicester Square Theatre in London’s West End.
Hyland is mankind! He literally jumps from character to character, from Marley to Scrooge, to the magpie people pinching deceased Scrooge’s belongings, even to the adorable Tiny Tim. Such energy. Such force. Genius.
Hyland gives us strong flashes of Albert Finney, and Alastair Sim, at their darkest. He not only lights up the stage with his vibrant personality and skill, but terrifies us too, so much so that at times I was scared to look directly into his eyes. What make-up! Extraordinary work by costume and make-up designer Nicki Martin-Harper.
In a happy memory of Christmas past, we are invited to a festive party to join the host, Scrooge’s old jolly boss Fezziwig, where Scrooge recognises people from the past, in the audience, making us feel part of the story. Scrooge sees himself as a young man. Regrets? He has a few…
One haunting line that really stood out for me was that Scrooge is ‘aligned to the child’, Tiny Tim. The warning is that Scrooge’s decisions and ensuing actions in not giving the Cratchit family a living wage (Hyland so captures the zeitgeist, take note, greedy government and employers) could have grave consequences for the well-being of the poor Cratchit family, especially Tiny Tim. After his character development arc in gaining wisdom, Hyland’s portrayal as Scrooge speaking from a window, down to the boy who fetches the prizewinning turkey, is joyful and heartwarming (with only a chair as a prop, incredible!) and he captures the true essence of this precautionary tale.
Ok, so what did we learn about Marley that we didn’t already know? Difficult question. I think that Marley is, excuse the pun, deadly serious about his warning to Scrooge, he is truly sorry for his avarice, and is in agony, in purgatory. Great, but oh dear. Will he be eventually released now he has helped Scrooge? Maybe one day, but not quite yet…
Do go and see this one-man-show if you can. You’ll have no regrets (Marley’s groan).
After crossing the bridge over the Yellowstone River south of Laurel, Montana, Paul turned off Highway 212 onto River Road. “Three miles to go.”
“Are you sure it’s still there?” Margo said.
“Yesterday Google said it was. Somebody could have put a match to it between then and now, of course.”
Paul pulled off River Road into a patch of weeds and turned off the engine. “It’s still here.”
Margo leaned forward and peered through the windshield at the dilapidated house a few feet from the car. “This is what we came to see. Your boyhood home.” She spoke as if she was announcing the time of day or the ambient temperature.
“Yes.”
“We drove 800 miles from Seattle, so I can look at a tumble-down shack.” Her voice remained flat, distant.
Paul looked embarrassed. “I guess so.”
“Now are you going to tell me why we’re here?”
When he didn’t reply, she squeezed his arm and said, “I’m so tolerant.”
Paul grinned. “That’s why I married you.”
“Nonsense. You married me for my pension.”
Paul laughed. “Well, yes, I did, but you’re not supposed to know that.” He looked at Margo. She was the only person he knew who could smile with just her eyes. Her eyes were glowing with warmth and humour.
He opened the car door. “I haven’t been here for sixty-eight years. Let’s look around.”
They got out of the car. Paul surveyed the ruins of the house where he had spent the first thirteen years of his life. Gaping holes, like vacant eye sockets, loomed where window glass had once been, and the doors were missing, having been pulled from the hinges years ago. All the exterior clapboards on the house’s south wall had been stripped away by old-wood scavengers, exposing warped studs that looked like the ribs of a skinned animal with its thorax split open.
They walked to the house. “Are there snakes here?” Margo asked.
“Could be. One day the old man beat a rattlesnake to death with a hoe right around here.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” she said, eyeing the thick growth of dead weeds scraping against her legs. “It doesn’t look safe. Don’t you dare go in there,” she said when they got near the house.
He thought about her caution as he gazed at the ruin; don’t go in there. An acid taste flooded his mouth. “No, I’m not going in. There’s nothing inside I want.”
He looked up. Two rusty corrugated metal sheets, what remained of the roof, clung to the rafters like brown scabs on a wound that refused to heal. He grimaced at the memory of him and Annie, his little sister, trembling with fear when torrential summer rains or hailstones hammered the metal roof with such fury they thought the house would tumble down and bury them under its wreckage.
He put his hands on two exposed studs, leaned forward and peered into the house. The pine floorboards had long ago collapsed onto the earth below. Weeds growing between the rotting pieces of wood stretched upward, reaching for the sun pouring through the open wound that was the missing roof. “We never had rugs. Even in winter when it was so damn cold, we never had rugs on the bare floor.”
Margo stepped beside him and peered into the house. Most of the plaster had fallen from the inside walls, exposing the underlying laths, splintered and shriveled with age. “It looks ghastly in there.”
“It wasn’t much of a house to begin with. In the winter, frost was so thick on the windows Annie and I could scratch our names in it or leave hand prints like the 45,000-year old prints in those caves in Spain.”
“Did you and Annie scratch your names in the walls like condemned prisoners do when they’re locked in some dark cellar cell awaiting execution?”
Paul smiled. “No. We weren’t prisoners.”
“But you were. Every little kid is someone’s prisoner.”
Prisoner.The word shimmered in his mind. More thoughts flooded in; were we prisoners in this house, held like criminals, unable to escape? “I never looked at it that way.”
“I would have frozen to death in this house,” Margo said.
“We had a kerosene stove for heat. The area around the stove was the only warm spot in the house.” After a moment, he said, “And we had kerosene lamps for light.”
“Was it difficult for you and Annie living here?”
Paul shrugged. “No. We didn’t have much choice. What else could we do?” He smiled at the memory. “Like most kids, we survived, even if we had the worst jailor in the world.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, the old man.”
“This is so depressing.” Margo hugged herself. “Why did you even live here?”
He thought about her question. Was there a way to explain the failure of a parent who subjected his family to abysmal conditions when there was enough money to provide for a better life, a decent home, warmth, and enough food? Probably not, so he said, “Rent on this house was ten dollars a month. The old man was thrifty. The less he spent on us the more he had to spend drinking, gambling, chasing barflies and the town’s whores.”
“That is so harsh. What a horrible childhood you had.”
“It sounds like an ugly childhood now, but it wasn’t then, not to Annie and me. We didn’t know any better. It should not have happened, of course, but it did, so there it is.” The anger rumbled in his gut, ready to spill out if he let the heat of memory get too high. “It can’t be changed. I don’t dwell on it.” He pushed away from the studs. “I’ve told you all this before.”
“Yes, you have.” She looked over the week-choked ground. “ Where was the outhouse?”
Paul pointed. “It wasn’t too bad in the summer, except for the mosquitoes. In the winter, when it was ten below zero, nobody lingered reading a magazine, that’s for sure.”
Margo laughed. “I’m sorry, Paul. I don’t mean to laugh, but that is something I can’t imagine.”
She swatted at an annoying fly buzzing around her face. The fly landed on her cheek, irritating her with its delicate crawl across her skin. She brushed it away. The summer heat annoyed her as much as the fly. “Now are you going to tell me why we came here?”
“There’s something I want.”
“We’re not here for memories, are we?”
“No. I’ve got enough of those. I want the pump. It’s on the north end of the house.”
Margo followed him around the house to a cast iron pump, caked with rust and missing its handle, surrounded by a thick clump of dead weeds. Margo watched Paul push the weeds aside, put his hand on the pump’s spout and stroke it as if he was caressing a lover. “In the winter, if we forgot to drain the pump at night, it froze and we couldn’t get any water in the morning.”
“What did you do?”
“We melted snow and poured the warm water over the pump until the pipe thawed. But even when we drained the pump to keep it from freezing, we still had to prime it in the morning.”
Margo shivered in the hot August sun. “You lived like it was 1850.”
“I guess we did. The pioneers and us. All we needed were wheels on the old house and a team of oxen. We could have rolled across the prairie, going West.”
He pushed more weeds away from the pump, dropped to his knees, looked at the pipe then stood and brushed off his pants. He walked to the car and returned carrying a hacksaw. He got on his knees and attacked the pipe with the saw. After a few minutes the pump fell to the ground.
She followed him to the car and waited for him to stow the pump and the hacksaw in the trunk. They got in the car and stared at the old house. Neither one said anything for several minutes, then Margo said, “What are you going to do with that pump?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve always wanted it.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and peered at the ruined house. “I should burn it down.”
“You’ll be arrested,” Margo said, sensing anger and grief in his voice.
“Might be worth it.”
“You can’t destroy memories by burning something down.”
“No, you can’t,” Paul said.
“Then let’s go home.”
Paul started the car and drove away. “Maybe another time I’ll burn it down,” he said as he watched the old house recede in the rearview mirror.
Margo put her hand on his arm. “Now will you tell me what you’re going to do with that pump?”
Robert P. Bishop, an army veteran and former teacher, lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has appeared in Active Muse,Ariel Chart, Better Than Starbucks, Bindweed Magazine, The Blotter Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, Clover and White, CommuterLit, Ink Pantry, Literally Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine and elsewhere.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Strappy flyby provides you with the occult nonsense the Gardener demands you play, when your own notebook is filled with love songs. Still, there’s nothing to be done but pick up the sticks and get down to business. Tonight Nairobi, tomorrow, who knows, but you’ve always wanted to see Accra.
Credo
I believe that people can be like they are in the movies
I believe that there is purity left out there in the world
I believe that some of the girls in the red sports cars are virgins (even if men are driving)
I believe that the wisdom of the dead has its place in the minds of the living
I believe that love can rule a nation
I believe in the future of surrealism
even if the old lechers never get their women
I believe that god is an erotic being
I believe that Hans Bellmer was a great artist
and polyhymnia help me I believe in the sanity of poetry
Greek Snow
I awoke naked, covered in contusions, in the middle of the Army/Loyola halftime show. I carried a bass drum, but no mallets, and I did not recognize the song we played, nor could I discern which team I marched for; everyone else wore silver spacesuits save the drum major, decked out in MacLeod of Harris Ancient with a neon purple sash.
It was no more than five seconds later the hawk phalanx screamed groundward from a cloudbank that looked for all the world like a corncob that used Thor’s hammer as a cob holder. This to be sure saved my bacon, but those in the stands stood as one, recited the prayer to St. Rita of Cascia at the top of their lungs, and exited stage right. With no audience left, the band quit playing, removed our shakos, and began to stuff them with predatory lenders.
Imaginary Borders
the mines splay out under the town spiderwebs in reverse
Nature’s Revenge (after Joseph Payne Brennan)
Something with stalk-eyes creeps from the lake tonight
It asks with those eyes sad but aware, for food
something crunchy that won’t turn to jelly when it bites down
something with a meaty flavour, perhaps
Popcorn for You, Apples for Me
The smell of cordite in streaks up to the stars, the only light left afterimages in the eyes of children. We drive home bleary with time, snow, one too many burgers, try to get the kids into the house while still asleep. It never works. We sit on the front step, eyes red, look up at scattershot stars in a thousand thousand colours and tell their stories until small eyes close once again.
Tom McCarthy
The colours explode in the matted fur of what hands what great beast
slouches trucklike from the swamps of Bethlehem
the letters on its license plate inverted
a flag flown upside down
international incommunicado
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Of Rust and Glass, The Museum of Americana, and Quill and Parchment, among others.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
when I see the evening, with it’s ordinary sounds and shapes so full of unbelieving composers and mistakes coming in- something wakes, and I begin.
what I can’t affect is getting colder as I grow older, retreating inside- I could be your wreck if I was bolder and called you over, over this side-
through the honeysuckle arch of midnight, moon like a lid bright shield in the sky; on the grass where footsteps last in this light- making a cast where you walked by.
I’m Getting Old Now
i’m getting old now- you know, like that tree in the yard with those thick cracks in its skinbark that tell you the surface of its lived-in secrets. my eyes, have sunk too inward in sleepless sockets to playback images of ghosts- so make do with words and hear the sounds of my years in yourself.
childhood- riding a rusty three-wheel bike to shelled-out houses bombed in the blitz, then zinging home zapped in mud to wolf down chicken soup over lumpy mashed potato for tea- with bare feet sticking on cold kitchen lino i shivered watching the candle burn down racing to finish a book i found in a bin- before Mam showed me her empty purse and robbed the gas meter- the twenty shillings stained the red formica table like pieces of the man’s brains splattered all over the back seat of his rambolic limousine as i watched history brush out her silent secrets.
Notes on Scraps of Screen Papyrus
notes on scraps of screen papyrus, symbol songs of our belongs- inspire us in the coffee smokes of day where the fire was in humid heats ashtray- inside us far away. the new consensus doesn’t show nomads in the census of its blow whose glow glads the past they left too slow: and the falling befalling where we now need to go- misfits the steps of the facefits in this trough of peaks and parapets. so we want wildly the wilderness that isnt fear- cut off, empty, smiley, pallet clear- the colours changed so rearranged and us not here.
Symphonic Waste
a quiet night. even the candle flame isn’t flickering- think i’ll just blow out its light and turn down the radio bickering. symphonic waste between the two goes back space for what is true- and the same discontented self dismantles every shelf of previous obsessions contaminated with old confessions. then your persuasions window walk in panes of pillow talk- inside this how, in here, in now- where no mortal elements can darken our consoled consents with ribbons of ripped repents that leave membranous scars: and when they do, they are no more than me, or you- everyone is subservient to the stars.
Life is Flamenco
why can’t i walk as far and smoke more tobacco, or play my spanish guitar like Paco, putting rhythms and feelings without old ceilings you’ve never heard before in a word.
life is flamenco, to come and go high and low fast and slow-
she loves him, he loves her and their shades within caress and spur in a ride and dance of tempestuous romance.
outback, in Andalusian ease, i embrace you, like melted breeze amongst ripe olive trees- dark and different, all manly scent and mind unkempt.
like i do, Picasso knew everything about you when he drew your elongated arms and legs around me, in this perpetual bed of emotion and motion for these soft geometric angles in my finger strokes and exhaled smokes of rhythmic bangles to circle colour your Celtic skin with primitive phthalo blue pigment in wiccan tattoo before entering vibrating wings through thrumming strings of wild lucid moments in eternal components.
i can walk as far and smoke more tobacco, and play my spanish guitar like Paco.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
You can find more of Strider’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I think we knew each other too well our intimate details were like close ups on the big screen you finished my sentences and my fries yet nobody was better at lies and we were both equal at tearful alibis and funny asides during tickle fights and just before we achieved absolute perfection like a Russian dancer there was a defection you left me for your oh so discrete indiscretion
Mister Liberty
You just don’t get me I’m playing life by ear by the seat of my pants with no net and my beating heart is the castanet my flamenco flame-throwing passions become the melody of the song and everything that can has already gone wrong but once upon a glass of cheap Chilean wine I got drunk with someone pretty in the big bad city and woke up when I wanted to because back then neither mother nature nor father time dared tell me what to do
Stage Fright
I have attempted to crack the code break the bank unravel this mystery or understand that lecture while chewing on some profundity within the proximity of someone who went viral because at the right time they had the right face and I have craned my neck to witness the Sistine Chapel while some girl named Eve complimented my Adam’s apple and yet I am still a garden variety dude fumbling with a Rubik’s Cube puzzled by the fact I am an understudy in my own play and lack the talent to truly act
Check, Please!
Let’s not kid ourselves the past thirty years have been a dirty joke told by a drunk coworker over a loud jukebox playing hits from the eighties in a bar full of the strangers who attended the weekend convention about self-actualization the contents of which they have not retained because the law of attraction and quantum physics don’t mean a thing when you ain’t got swagger or an iota of the swing yet everyone still expects you to pick up the bill when you’re over the hill
Totally Rad
Sleep next to me in the cheap motel of my fogged memory then in the morning we can drive up the Specific Coast Highway of my vague vagabond dreams because I used to know where I was on the map now I can’t put my finger on exactly what has gone wrong and find myself relating to some yacht rock song because when it came out everyone I truly loved was still alive and arguing over a trifle or a waffle in the kitchen anyway ignore what I am saying cause I’m just bitching
Easily Persuaded
I haven’t yet captured that illusive image that one might hang in a gallery or museum but I still have seen some things that are permanently ingrained in the trauma centre of my third eye and those snap shots I show nobody no way, no how until you demanded with your sultry eyes and pouty lips that I reveal those secret branded watermarks to you now
Over-Thinking
Look I wish there was fairy dust or glitter rain and that everything and everywhere was disco Disneyland rather than average everyday last minute cancelations and inner Nixon-like resignations or opaque self-realizations like fallen cake birthday wishes making you feel like a kitchen filled with dirty dishes after a party where love was once again averted because you never even flirted with the idea that it will take someone else to get you to step out of yourself
Bedroom Layout
Yes, she slept with him and no, you won’t take her back into the fold of your blankets and your sheets even if winter is approaching and it’s going to be a bitter one for the record books it says so in the Old Farmer’s Almanac and it’s time to admit you have become such a fuddy-duddy hypochondriac, insomniac now that your honey ain’t never coming back to your sugar shack on the wrong side of the tracks
Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and popular contemporary poet. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview Magazine and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan was commissioned by Absolut Vodka to make a painting titled Absolut Jenson for the brand’s national ad campaign. His Absolut paintings are in the collection of the Spirit Museum, the museum of spirits in Stockholm, Sweden.
Jenson’s painting of the “Marlboro Man” was collected by the Philip Morris corporation. Ivan was commissioned to paint the final portrait of the late Malcolm Forbes. Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Jenson’s poetry is widely published (with over 1000 poems published in the US, UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. A book of Ivan Jenson’s poetry was recently published by Hen House Press titled Media Child and Other Poems, which can be acquired on Amazon. Marketing Mia has published the hardcover. Ivan Jenson’s new bestselling thriller novels, The Murderess, and his top 4 Amazon UK and US bestselling novel, The Widow, are both now available on Amazon. A new collection of Ivan Jenson’s finest poetry called, Mundane Miracles, will be released worldwide November, 29, 2022.
They were no less than stately homes; visitors welcome, within reason. Lovingly sculptured gardens wreathed the facades of baroque bedlams just far away enough.
The learned pages of medical journals were stuffed with architectural theories explaining how external grandeur would raise the oppressed spirits of the mad.
Yet what palace can agreeably cater for thousands? From the spaceless dormitories bursting with the fetid stench of a blistered and purged humanity, the wretched spilled out into the airing courts. A hollow laughter tolled time for those marooned behind the Ha-Ha walls.
You’ve stood this side of them at the zoo: forbiddingly tall to the inmates, low enough for visitors to view unrestrictedly.
A sign requests that you refrain from feeding the animals. There are people specially trained to do that.
Raymond Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter, and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment.
You can find more of Raymond’s work here on Ink Pantry.
A strange glance from my right, the benches that frame this monument leak bodies sat upright, static in this heat. Their brows are reflective, but without thought, as magpies rattle and dance in trees too thin to cast shadows.
This stone pillar, a crude reminder of those ravaged by a lack of cohesion; just another product of a time which refused its clocks to stop, if only so it could recoup and strengthen its path, to open its eyes productively.
The faces carved into inappropriate places fail to resonate as intended; the grass hill like a dandelion sprouted on a derelict pavement. A hundred bodies lay under its foundations, unaware of the lack of progress that turn their graves to mere memories.
Late summer heat allows us this lazy observation, to avoid absorption of the remnants of this landmark. We move drunkenly back towards the city, as the last passing dog of the evening slavers upon its steps.
The Broken Bar
Shattered glass frames the feet of aging yuppies shuffling in Birkenstocks, the walls absorb the clink of ice cubes in glasses and hands. A barrage of bad politics masquerading as “opinions” rides over any conversation that would otherwise heighten this more than lowered tone.
The tiny speakers that spew forth this music never threaten to fall, and hang like badly carved gargoyles, they remain as blank as these faces, that attempt pensive expressions but only manage to execute bovine grins, that answer each question with the same depletion of substance.
Their reputations as stale as the two-for-one drinks that fuel their afternoon; broken laptops and cufflinks pile high in their thousands as the final bell tolls in this shattered bar, as they take the last sip of their grime filled nectar, they finally retreat, if only to replenish their funds.
Jonathan Butcher has had poetry appear in various publications including The Morning Star, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review, Picaroon Poetry, Sick Lit, Cajun Mutt Press and others. His fourth chapbook ‘Turpentine’ was published by Alien Buddha Press. He is also the editor of the online poetry journal Fixator Press.
disarray bustle as they group slide off bus treading quickly holding useless bundles spouting too many words to register as real carrying reasons unrelated to time as is into blend of light rain and cars too loud
a laugh or shout or scowl binding a pinch as truth unfolds while spilling into veins of pathways and roads for next attempt at situation that could easily go unnoticed in body mass of many separating in light
and me in my after-covid fog no better clutching at strongest black coffee found relishing seat at too wobbly outside table trying not to return to thought of sick bird flapping in my overgrown back garden
another bus stops and out they fall again and i become locked in why happenings the corner fight between two meth-heads my partners kind eyes when concerned and has bird already been killed by cat
a guy asks me for a cigarette and i jump and instead of sorry mate or i don’t smoke i nod a feeble decline and he mumbles off while i gulp coffee aware of small pleasures crowds on buses and a dying bird’s plight
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.
