20th Century Faux
(by Linda Cosgriff)

Be my beard, she pled; I have a female lover
and I love you like a brother.

I will, he said, for I love you like no other
and I will love you ‘til I’m dead.

Mark Sheek’s Oil Painting: The Resurrection Sonata: Adagio In A Key Of Yellow And Blue: Part 2 of a Triptych (available for purchase)

The Leveller
(by John F. Keane)

The pale frog sprawls across parched canvas.
Cave-eyed in represented sentience
And limbless repose, he loves us not.

Across the craggy border goes the grieving man,
Cast from his hall of pride into a harder place.
His robes are rags, his sceptre now a staff
And all his storied wealth is barren slate.

The pale frog blinks and stirs.
His mottled, bloodless flesh gleams maggot-white
Across the starless void.

The Reveal, When It Came, Surprised Him
(by Linda Cosgriff)

I thought you were God, he wailed,
not frog.
I thought you exposed, he sighed,
not toad.
How can the amphibious, he wept,
be so insidious?

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Resurrection Sonata: Improvisation On A Theme Of Toad: Part 1 of a Triptych (available for purchase)

City of Promise
(by Nicola Hulme)

Gleaming city of sleek dreams;
sky-scraping arks, housing bright sparks
in power suits who contribute,
custodians for generations to come.

Grime and greed crept up the towers
polluted minds, killed Hope’s flowers.
A scarcity mentality ordered more,
politicians decreed more, nations demanded more.

Green mould envy infiltrated, penetrated
poisoned the air, rotted all Lust touched.
populations flocked to the City Of Promise, only to find
the gates locked, leaving barbed-wire-strangled aspirations.

Children homeless, helpless, starving for acceptance
eyed classrooms where obese pupils consumed
knowledge and technology whilst spitting venom at teachers,
blind to opportunities squandered by their sense of entitlement.

Those who had, threw their arms around it.
Those without, schemed how they might take it.
Depressed buildings crumbled, anxious highways collapsed.
Fires burned, acid rain fell, darkness descended and all was ash.

Yet, amongst ruins the red rose bloomed.
Beating hearts, replaced by flashing cursors
in single occupancy cubicles, tapped keys, professed love
to pouting profiles; edited, filtered, cropped.

Planned futures together, anticipated red-blooded
pulsating embraces from days of old.
Romeo found Juliet in Cyberspace.
He offered a virtual rose.

Without nourishment of tender loving hands
the rose faded and drooped,
hanging its sterile head
in a cold world of desolation.

Juliet was infected by a virus.
Romeo watched from behind his firewall.
Her account flickered and died.
Their connection forever lost.

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Triumph Of The Mechnauts (available for purchase)

As flesh turns to crêpe
As sky fades to yesterday
As the rose powders
The Eye pulls out the past

There’s the house where we made moments
it glows under a moonlit stage
empty for new blood
repeat of chances
promises
dreams
love
life

Fading flag of time
one last chance to mast

Step this way to death
Hang your stash of moments on its branches
Jigsaw in haphazard un-order-juggle-throw-sway
Step back, forward, back
Link you-to me-to-them-to that-to them-to it-to they-to who-to there-to why?

Understood backwards
Checkmate
Curtain

Deborah Edgeley

Mark Sheeky’s Oil painting: The Shore Of Forever (available for purchase)

I dreamed of striped creature
Ochre. Black.

Fading and breaking with lightening fear
Claws ready to scrape cheese from
Fine sunlit moon.

Followed by hidden eyes
Strangely striped scarlet
Growing from thick tendrils.

Two or more tiny humanistic figures
Ventured from cold stone with their pins
Ready to slay said creature

Pins no more the size of a single hair of their foe
Whilst The Bishop of Accra was contacted
That very same day.

In a flash of lightening. Above pin spears held high
Striped fearless tiger leaps
Across green sky.

Maggie Waker: Write Out Loud

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Tiger Moving Nowhere At All (available for sale)

Beasts gaze upward
To Gods or Monsters
Cross blood drips,
A reminder of ascension.

Break . . .

Away

Randall Horton: Write Out Loud

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: God Being Killed By Theists And Atheists (available for sale)

Till Death Do Us Part
(by Nigel Astell)

Bride was unfaithful
murdered by Groom
white wedding dress
soaking blood red
death sentence passed
lifeless hanging corpse
devil lovers whisper
honeymoon in hell
this ghost marriage
can now begin.

Look At Me
(by Martin Elder)

Is this how you really see me
Is this how you want to see me
Daubed here
Hung here for the whole world to see me
This nervous wisp of a sprite
In all her pasty glory
Look at me
LOOK AT ME
Please…please look at me
I am trying to smile
I really am

Are my eyes really that colour?
Are you sure
My skin is so beautiful
Don’t say just like me
It’s so crass
So obvious
So sad like the look in my eyes
Look at me
Tell me this is a lie
That this is just a cheap imitation
That I am something more than this
I have arms and legs
A whole body to
I have a mind
Ears that hear everything
Every last drop of gossamer breath
I see
I see you now
I see you yesterday
And the day before
And the day before that when you are moaning
And yet you just see today
Looking back at me
Am I a trophy
Your badge of honour
For a job well done
Look at me
No don’t look away
Look at me…please
O.K. I will be here
Waiting…
Until you come again to look at me

Last Picture
(by Randall Horton)

Last Picture

A girl

         Or a boy

Looks at the illusion of time

                        And imagines a future

Free from space.

                       A continuum breaks.

A smile, too.

Woman
(by Maggie Waker)

Some say she’s scary
I say she’s scared

Some say she’s pale
I say she’s poorly.

Some say she’s tired
I say she’s trapped

Some say she’s thin
I say she’s slim

Some say she’s delicate
I say she’s ethereal

Some say she’s plain
I say she’s ill – favoured

Some say she stares
I say she cares.

Some say they connect
I say I bond.

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Miss X (available for sale)

Even the hardest rock succumbs to time,
its unrelenting elements. Now spume
casts white blankets atop their home, a chime

unheard announces their collective doom.
No bee is an island. A paradigm
as much for them as man. And as their tomb

envelopes them a hundred bees will hum.
Ask not for whom the bees hum; it is them.
For this is their communal kingdom come
and as the sea becomes them, say Amen.

Andy Millican: Write Out Loud

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: A Tower of Bees Hit by Forces Beyond Their Control (available for purchase)

A fairy-feller hides in emerald shades
While feathered faces dance the perfect dance
Evading hope in pale, despondent glades
Where shadows stumble on a wild mischance:
And all of this beyond the edge of sleep
Where dreamers kill the things they care to keep.

A wedge of futuristic steel observes
And coolly calibrates this elfin scene
Kissed by a savage sun along its curve,
No form more dread than this has ever been:
It brings the future and the end of days
To wayward dreams and errant human ways.

Who knows if at some cold and vast remove
The wedge will raise again these faerie lands
Within its clouded circuits? Dreaming groves
Of rusting trees where still the gnomon stands:
Where robot birds hail corrugated skies
And elves of chrome kiss iron butterflies.

John Keane: Write Out Loud

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Paranoid Schizophrenia Of Richard Dadd (available for purchase)