A Prose Poem from the Editor, A.J. Huffman

Killing for a Dram of Self-Preservation

            In the night you dream of killing.  Not in cold blood with malicious intent, but in self-defense you destroy friend and stranger -- equally.  With knife or gun, or both.  And confess it all to your father as you wrestle with blankets that wrap around you, revealing the knife you keep beneath your bed.

            In the day, armed with a pen, you slay these haunting images.   Terrified, you struggle to sort the knowledge from the elusive thoughts that stuff your pillow -- certain that determination will destroy your persecutors.  Ink melds with blood, spilling forth in a breathing prose of death.

            Yet the truth is never hidden.  I can see it even now as I envy your troubled slumber.  I admire your rebellious heart, fiercely pumping fear and pride, fueling the turmoil.  I, who have no dreams, wish for someone to kiss.  For bloodshed to ruffle my blankets.  I am jealous of your strife -- your effort to continue living.  The instinct for self-preservation I lack.  The demons you choose to banish are the lost angels I long for.  Restless uncertainty clouds your vision, distorting the image.  Allowing you to curse the gift I see, so clearly, before you.

A Poem by Richard Schnap

FIELD STUDY

It was Sunday. He sat outside
A coffeehouse under a grey canopy

Of clouds, watching his corner of the world
Pass by, noticing the ones who walked

Alone, old men with haunted faces,
Young girls with sad blue eyes,

All seeming lost and in no hurry
To reach somewhere no different

From where they began. And he wondered
What made them that way, what it was

They wished for, an easy death,
An honest love, or maybe something else,

A longing that had no name, wore no face,
Cast no shadow, mirrored no reflection,

That was only revealed after it was gone,
When it was too late to stop it and ask it why.

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

A Poem by Rick Hartwell

Little League

 

I see a baseball player

in full regalia,

cocky hat,

strutting cleats,

on his way to a night game;

bat slung on his shoulder,

mitt dangling from his hand.

 

These are days of thrill

for him as he click-clacks

across an asphalt road and

onto the concrete sidewalk.

 

He’s a superstar raised on high,

riding three-quarter inch stilts

above common spectators,

those still  ignorant of his

presumed superiority,

all except me, as I turn into the

parking lot of lost intentions.

 

 

 

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.

Three Poems by Sara Schmidt

Stayed Sentiments

Lips tore at lips in violent bites,
Nicking with bladed boasts in jaguar's kiss
A fervid frenzy of teeth and tongue
In a first and final claim
As the blast struck--


Red

fire hair is tangled rage,
flaming feathers framing soft cheeks--
an ardent visage shadowed with coppery heat.
passion, lust, stinging desire--
waves of all-consuming presence--
burning dominion,
biting grace--
all encased within
florid filaments of red.


Cramming

Crumpled pixie stix
Strewn across battered notebooks
Spill bits of crystal madness
Onto x = y, squared
She nearly inhales it as,
With a last scrawl of
Why Caddy is Faulkner's
Heart's darling--
Doubling the period with a
Dark graphite flourish--
She spies the glow
Of a sugar high sunrise
Just beyond the taffy wrappers
And coke bottles

Sara Schmidt is a writer from Missouri. A homeschooling mom, artist, wife and activist, she is the author of two supernatural erotica books at Changeling Press and has a third coming in June. Sara works full-time as a freelance writer and has written for dozens of publications both on and offline, including Life Learning Magazine, Teaching Tolerance, Short Fast and Deadly, Daily Kos, What the Dickens, wiseGEEK, Blink Ink, From the Depths and Ecorazzi.

Three Poems by Sy Roth

Avatars Dissolve on the Wind

 

mountains of them,

breathless idolaters

linked under an umbrella-blue-sky, 

hundreds like underwear crammed in a suitcase

helter skelter compost piles of them,

caterwaul encouragement,

medal bearers lavish them with gold,

            silver-capers drape them,

                        spring’s leaden warm air lulls them.

 

festivities buried beneath

an ear-splitting smog

breath whisked away in a screaming chariot

calm adrift on a madding sea,

reduced to pulpy street dross,

limbs afloat in a wind of howls

cordite-choking cloud

a shroud.

vermilion walk of fame stars mark their being.

 

avatars dissolve on a wind of desiccated truths

under the blue umbrella

before piles of limbs

and streets to be washed

dressed in a soft-down of teddy bears.

 

 

 

Amalek, Feared No God

 

The tired ones hung back

walk-weary lines of them

snaking the rear

shuffling gait

young ones their crutches.

 

Youthful steps moved the others forward

heads mounted to their goal

inattentive to the rear.

 

Amalek swore to his soldiers

he would preserve them,

desiccate the healthy,

consume the old and bent.

 

Godless ones licked their lips,

for the laggards were a tempting lot

easily consumed

swept away before so

the others could mourn.

 

They ate the rear with

cannibalistic gusto.

Youth buried beneath their weak,

laved in their blood.

 

A storm of tears unglued the skies.

Men razed their dreams,

the meek,

the weak,

the inform,

the young

lost in a morass of ego.

 

Amalek feared no god,

only himself.

 

 

 

Nail Emporium

 

Friday’s nail day at the nail emporium.

Korean girls sit prettily at their stations

grinders, files, cuticle cutters, potions and penchants

neatly arrayed.  It’s slow today.

Lone male, nail aficionado greets a woman

who has come to have her toes smeared iridescent green,

moves her gracefully to the high-backed seats at the rear of the store,

Us magazines and a bucket of warm water ready to soak her feet.

 

Nail girl, sits at a front table blinkless.

Outside, rain splashes against the glass,

she focuses on the weeping window.

Vacuity renders her a statue,

Korean words and phrases dance in her head,

Elaine’s world of Korean curses and gibes,

ennui wrapped in utter silence.

 

Brains cells drown in a tornado of fingernail dust,

hands rest like dead fish on her lap

thumb and pointer fingers without a whisper of movement,

bopless head anchored, ignores the hip-hop beat,

that tears at the walls from the shop next door.

Nails idly refuse to tap a sonata of recognition.  

Immobile Stepford Wife, dreams of the growing nails of the dead,

when the bell-chime announces her eleven o’clock’s

perfectly-wrapped-nails race.

Her head snaps in that direction,

nail God activated the switch for her eyes.

Her mouth gasps open and tongue flaps a greeting at the same time.

Life-blood courses now like a raft afloat on rapids,

rain water mixes with the ghastly image of

prickled up fingers of a hoary forgotten hand.

She ignores the woman with cotton balls between each toe

readied for an application of cherry –red toe nail polish.

She focuses on the nails in front of her

and the how’s-the-weather discourse for the next hour

until her clock runs down.

 

 

 

 

Sy Roth comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai , far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace.   He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications such as Pif Magazine, The Circle Review, Poetry Super Highway, Millers Pond Review, Earthborne, Nostrovia, Cyclamens and Swords, The Germ, Rockhurst Review, Toucan, Wilderness Interface Zone, Red Ochre,  Bong is Bard, Danse Macabre, Mel BraKe Press, Larks Fiction Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Otoliths, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, brief, The Weekenders, The Squawk Back, Bareback Magazine, Dead Snakes, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Peripheral Surveys,  Scapegoat Review, The Artistic Muse, Inclement,  Napalm and Novocain, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), Em Dash, Subliminal Interiors, South Townsville Micropoetry Journal, The Penwood Review, The Rampallian, Vox Poetica, Clutching at Straws, Downer Magazine, Full of Crow, Abisinth Literary Review, Every Day Poems, Avalon Literary Review, Napalm and Novocaine, Wilderness House Literary Review, St. Somewhere Journal, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Neglected Ratio, Windmills Magazine and Kerouac’s Dog.  One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle.  Twice selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway .  His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012. He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. Included in Poised in Flight anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press, March 2013.  A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.

 

A Poem by Alessandra Mascarin

I HAD A DREAM AND I WAS THERE

 

And every night she went to that sea and she saw herself

Free dancing foam

in my absent eyes of glass

Free evanescent skirt

in the white play of my wind

 

And every night she went to that sea and she saw herself

 

Life captured by the inebriation of freedom,

forever consecrated to the emotion of a Memory

Reflection of the last happiness hour,

born from the sea to flood my soul

 

And every night she went to that sea and she saw herself

 

White melancholy pleasure

through my rhythmic jumps downhill

Blue harmonic frenzy

through the depths of my moon halo

 

And every night she went to that sea

to drown into the timeless immensity

And she saw herself

inside the stable and fleeting totality

 

 

 

Alessandra Mascarin is an Italian lady of 22 currently living in the UK.  She has recently graduated in Foreign languages and literatures - English and Spanish - and her strongest passion, developed mostly in the last two years, is writing poetry.  She usually writes her works in Italian, translating her best into English and Spanish.  She is also interested in body psychology, modern art and travelling to enter in contact with new worlds, realities and cultures.  She is looking for a future in the literary world, from the creative writing to the translation field.

 

A Poem by John Kross

Dead Bones Don't Die

 

The skeletons my father keeps in his closet
are not my own,
those bones would be far too obvious.
The demons he fought I've put in the ground,
the bones his daddy gave him,
the ones I said would not be mine.

But dead bones don’t die,
at least the bones that pass from fathers to sons,
instead they fester and stew
and boil below the surface
where barely a sound is heard.
Meanwhile my boys are busy digging them up.

Its true
boys tend to dig and get dirty;
my boys dig up bones
and drum them on my door.

I worked so hard to break the cycle,
to raise my boys without the pain,
to protect their fragile hearts from heartache,

I kept telling myself to keep the dead dead,
but its hard to do when the dead don't really die,
instead they lie about the absence of pain,
the pain I knew so well,
the fear that motivated me to be something more,
to push myself beyond
what I thought I could be,
to a place where I might be a man.

But here at the end
my boys are still boys drumming up bones,
no fear, they expect the world to be easy.

I have learned that fear can be a great motivator.
It worked for me
but not my boys
I never gave them anything to fear.
I gave them boats with oars
and straw to make brick
and lots of love and plenty of hugs
and always told them I was proud of them

but I never gave them fear.

Now my boys fear nothing
but expect everything

dead bones don't die

they just look different

John Kross is an aspiring poet working and living in Dallas,Texas. He has been published here several times before in 2012 and 2013 including the 2012  best of antholgy "Storm Cycle". You can read more from him under the pen name "V" at www.hellopoetry.com

Two Poems by Debra Doggett

I Am Not You

 

I am not you (breathe sigh of relief here).

No god puppets my mouth with words of guilt and shame to use as weapons against what frightens me.

Words don’t twist my tongue in illogical contortions on the useless path to judgment (stick tongue out here – wave),

and I don’t have to hide the dark side so others never see,

stuffing it down into side pockets of my soul where it festers and spreads.

I am moonlight and shadow, swift river and still pond.

I have glimpses of brilliance and dark nights of madness and both are mine,

both are the sheltered inhabitants of my path.

Fear and doubt bring questions and wonder, not hate and violence.

I am a moving image of the Divine, walking a path of mystery to an end of hope and rebirth.

I am not you.

 

 

 

The Ravages of Age

 

Pieces of me hang near and far

or float back down from where I threw them in my rage,

my legacy scattered by my frailty.

They peek out from where I lost them in my forgetfulness

and wonder if they want to come back or not.

There are days that hidden is good, that lost is safer.

But at the rate I’m spinning apart, there’ll be nothing left to die when the time comes.

 

 

 

Debra Doggett is a freelance writer and editor who lives in the desert of New Mexico. She has published two novels, seen one of her stage plays produced and her favorite screenplay made into a short film.

A Poem by April Salzano

Natural

My skin is skin tight.

My birthday suit suits me like a blue moon.

I wear my spare tire as default attire,

realize there are more trees in the forest

than I can shake a stick at. They intersect

the light at painful intervals. I carry

my cross to the crossing, burdens

drag me to my knees where I do not pray,

but swim through yesterday’s memories

like mud. Opaque quicksand pulls

the full weight of me in undertow’s

internal current.

 

 

 

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first (several) poetry collections and an autobiographical work on raising a child with Autsim. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspiration, Deadsnakes, The Rainbow Rose and other online and print journals and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly and Bluestem.

A Poem by Tom Hatch

Scraps of Paper Her Nights of Christ’s Shirt

 

Sketches adorn many a dog eared paper

New ideas on textured napkins her open note book

are sexy skirts of chiffon off the shoulder,

dresses silk puffy collars

and gowns of flowing designs with open backs

Stacks and stacks of drawings

Scraps of paper sketches on top of them

Drawing the evidence that her thoughts pour out

Onto pages all night insomniac gracefully

on a new sheet of 8 ½”x11” a sketch of a

female figure with an asymmetrical sexy skirt

hands on hips long neck long legs

"printed source pg. 183 Byzantium" I found

the 2” thick book on pg. 183 is a

Painting tempera gold leaf on wood

first half of the 14th century

from Constantinople artist unknown

the holy drama three figures

symmetrical ascendant in the

center is Christ on the cross the left is

the Virgin Mary dressed in a

blue maphorion bordered with

gold fringe and a hood standing small head

Mourning face almost horizontal to the ground

on the right is St John the Evangelist

dressed in maroon robe over

a light blue dress flowing down covering

so you do not see his feet

holds his head in right hand sorrowfully covers his face

with blue sleeve hanging open down 

in the shape of a tormented mouth

small trees popping out of the lower portion of landscape

behind the cross two small angels float above Christ’s

out stretched arms held by nailed hands

a semicircle halo glows from his back to above his head

Christ is dressed in that

asyemmetrical skirt on the new sheet

 

Her journey at night traveling from the

Mediterranean to the Black Sea

on pages filled with holy trinity for a

new season of blessed garments in the

new fall collection Christ died for fashion 

On the cross wearing an asymmetrical shirt

Soon to be cat walked center stage

 

 

 

 

Tom Hatch paid his dues in the SoHo art scene way back when. He was awarded two NEA grants for sculpture back then. And taught at various colleges and universities in the NYC metro area in art (including Princeton and U of Penn. in Philly). He is a regular at The Camel Saloon and BoySlut. He had recently published at The Mind[less] Muse, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain and Dead Snakes among others. He lives in CT with a few farms up and down the road works in Manhattan. His train ride to and from NYC is his solace, study and den where it all begins and ends.

 

Two poems by Dawnell Harrison

Freshly plucked

 

Her maiden mouth lay

Pinned on her like

 

Freshly plucked red

Rose petals.

 

Her love is gathered

And split into the unwinding

 

Dark like the dust

Of a rock’s quarry.

 

Her boundless heart sets

Fire to the stars as they

Blazed into the midnight fury.

 

 

 

Motherless

 

Disappointment has another mouth

To feed in the dark asylum

 

Of her heart.

She reaches up to find

 

The sky starless and motherless.

In the silent still of the night

 

She reaches for innocent fingertips

And finds her hands broken and without.

 

 

 

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 100 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Fowl Feathered Review, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Vox Poetica, Queen's Quarterly, The Vein, Word Riot, Iconoclast, Puckerbrush Review, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, Absinthe: A journal of poetry, and many others.

A Poem by Tendai R. Mwanaka

IF WE ONLY KEEP TO IT

 

Unconscious things,

                  have to run-

                      their natural courses.

 

The moon frosted horizons-

                 knew the things,

                      which were emerging.

 

Beginnings of intense loyalty,

                travelling companions-

                       have of the other.

 

This is as good-

               a direction as any other,

                       if we can only keep to it.

 

It’s only the wind that lives alone,

               and we can only drink this wind.

                       For we are dead if separate.

 

Tendai R. Mwanaka was born in Zimbabwe, in the remote eastern highlands district of Nyanga, in Mapfurira village. Left Nyanga for Chitungwiza city in 1994, and started exploring writing that year, when he was barely twenty. His first book to be published, Voices from exile, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa, by Lapwing publications, Ireland, 2010. KEYS IN THE RIVER: Notes from a Modern Chimurenga, a novel of interlinked stories that deals with life in modern day Zimbabwe was published by Savant books and publications, USA 2012, found here; http://www.savantbooksandpublications.com/9780985250621.php. A book of creative non-fiction pieces, THE BLAME GAME, will be published by Langaa RPCIG( Cameroon 2013), a novel entitled, A DARK ENERGY will be published by Aignos publishing company( USA). He was nominated for the Pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize 2008, He was nominated and attended Caine African writing workshop, 2012. Published over  250 pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and visual art in over 150 magazines, journals, and anthologies in the following countries,  the USA , UK , Canada , South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Mexico, Kenya, Cameroon, Italy , Ghana, Uganda, France , Zambia, Nigeria, Spain , Romania, Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand.

Three Poems by John Pursch

Tapping Through Whales

  

Mulch depends on futuristic cameos,

stung to swilling punchbowl lye,

capturing esophageal songs

with bayou relevance.

 

Gauzy smiles convey

a newborn sandwich,

muddying the quartermaster’s

impious glare with smoldering

hyena breath.

 

Ribbed idolatry seeps upstream,

caching sallow victories

in staid executors,

mumbling freely over

cummerbund crouton torts.

 

Spittle flaws the evening

gadget’s turnkey pylon,

rescinding stalled grunge

whenever ties are diced

to sauteed chicken ease.

 

Periodic swing sets

dote on cloned effrontery,

mixing latter-day missives

with fusillades of dungeon ears,

tapping through whales.

 

 

 

Horsehide Clouds

  

Spent couples equipped

with spinal trapezes

swallow diverse deities,

pulsating in dude ranch tresses.

 

Cowering cauterizers

sizzle and graft,

streaming yesteryear’s

blonde quotations

to mimed styrene polyps.

 

Minors dignify the proscenium,

cooling out in flowing caissons,

bobbled below horsehide clouds.

 

Rotation, gyration,

a nearby speck of motive illusion,

subsiding to repeal a tacky drill bit’s

futile impression,

flaunting muffled antics

behind evolving barks…

 

 

 

The Deskbound Stork

  

Teething rungs impel alluvial mendicants to vinyl treasure silos, training naked handrail sliders to speak of trolling pasty hounds in saturated sheets. Oddly complicit authorities indemnify a fealty bowl, stipulating redundant whines when mangled oxen wither hourly.

 

Debentures mature in ripened shaving garb, pin the schlock on wigged inflatables, and undermine colonic highballs, cheering on supercilious magpies till defrocked talcum bulbs surrender moot turbulence to incantation feet.

 

Evenly bobbled whiskey sippers tan in merciless canisters, hinged on outboard egret knees, softened up by polar monomaniacs from similar proxies. Lingual isthmus tirades bark and sniffle clockwise, collaring a taskbar’s cashew craving, stiffening in the droning fawn’s mule team fantasies of cardboard tears.

 

“I am umbilical,” asserts the deskbound stork, clarifying deferred junctions in time-gash strips, pressed from newsprint grotto chasms, filmy and denatured by depilatory drams.

 

 

 

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has appeared in many literary journals and was recently nominated for the Sundress Best of the Net 2012 Anthology. His most recent book, Intunesia, is available in paperback from White Sky Books at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks . He's @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

A Poem by Joop Bersee

Damnation

Her hunger has no clothes.
Her shoulders offered, wreaths
the remains of a battle between
wind and wind, dull wind lying
on a stone, close to the high chair

of king and father, sweat like
pearls breathing into far fields,
a turtle o so slowly, away from child
and tree. The sky sings like a dog
shivering beneath its bony skin.

A daze of thoughts takes my arm
to a car full of remorse, just a few
words floating to the surface as
the world begins to move through
the black wooden gate of damnation.

Joop Bersee was born in the Netherlands in 1958 in Aerdenhout. From 1989 to 1996 he lived in South Africa where he began writing poetry in English in 1991. His poetry has been published in South Africa, England, Wales, Canada, Brazil, India (in a translation),the United States and Ireland. In 2011 he was one of the winning poets of the Dalro Award in South Africa. Currently he works for the library of a museum in Amsterdam.

Two Poems by John Grey

DEAD BULL’S POEM

 

The bull is pounding sand.

What does he know?

Maybe the crowd is here for hint,

Maybe they want to see the guy

in fancy hat and silk jodhpurs

get gored through the heart,

his rib-cage battered by hoofs,

his flashy red cape

stuffed down his gullet.

 

But out stride the picadors,

jabbing the creature

with sharp lances,

thawing blood and pain

from his shiny brown rump.

Maybe they just want to get him worked up,

raw anger flaring through his nostrils,

muscle and bone pulsing, hammering.

They’ll stand for no mistakes this time.

The matador must be destroyed.

 

And out struts the man in question.

The bull snorts.

He eyes the villainous showoff.

Sequins, indeed.

Roses! I’ll give him roses!

The crowd cheer.

But why?

El Whatshisname is not even dead yet.

 

 

 

A POET READS

 

On that smoky, humid night,

all the poems she had written

suddenly fell out of her face,

crashed on the blood-soaked reefs

of throat and breasts.

She hated herself for

this waterfall of selfishness

but when does the pain

have time to size itself up

against other pains,

It acts immediately

according to its creed,

pounds away at all it sees,

reckless and ruthless,

tearing at the scenery,

down to the brittle words,

“Let me out of here.”

 

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review.

 

Two Poems by John Grochalski

a baseball game in the rain

 

she says but you don’t know

how i spent monday worrying

thinking maybe she’s off too and visiting you there

like the two of you are out to lunch

laughing and smoking her cigarettes on some street

and i nod, quiet and contemplative before i speak

realizing coldly that human beings can only know each other so well

and reassurances in times of great doubt

are a comforting as smog

as good as watching a baseball game in the rain.

into the traffic of this brave new world

 

the morning newspapers

call new york city a cesspool

and i think they must be reporting

right from the street that i’m walking on

with sewers stinking of day-old piss and feces

as cars and trucks billow yellow smoke

into the traffic of this brave new world

where the sun doesn’t so much shine down its warmth and light

but reflect a soft cancer that keeps killing us all

 

 

 

 

 

John Grochalski is a published writer whose poetry and prose have appeared in several online and print publications including:  Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Outsider Writers Collective, Underground Voices, The Lilliput Review, The Main Street Rag, Zygote In My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, and Bartleby Snopes.  I have two books of poetry The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch (Six Gallery Press) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press), and a third book, The Sun Causes Cancer forthcoming. His chapbook In the Year of Everything Dying can be viewed via Camel Saloon’s Books on Blogs series (http://booksonblog26.blogspot.com/).

Five Poems by Christopher Barnes

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (38)

 

One frame inheriting another…

Blood on marble and white roses.

Stand-alone vampire crystallizes into a statue.

The nearest pall-bearer sucks air.  Crushed urn.

 

Froth overruns chapelry pews

Through a hinge-wrecked door –

An ephemeral embodiment.

 

 

 

 

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (39)

 

Take No. 7

In rubescent lamé pyjamas.

Sabrina Roper’s is a skin-deep part,

Moulding exposed nerves

In the screening room.

A moon-buffed kiss on hand.

His Satanic Majesty simpers.

 

Runaway violin a bedlamite tango…

Chimps neighing over the sobs of men…

 

 

 

 

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (40)

 

The picture palace reviews

May get off-the-beam

About the overacting.

Hold the focus,

Instantaneous sunrise behind a shot -

Costumes: the fantasia keeps time

With a hue and cry.

The limelit alehouse at dead of night.

Our Stunt Co-ordinater isn’t exasperated

By bee swarms in gusts,

Nor the beg-hard grimace

On Manola Dean’s hauled up face.

 

 

 

 

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (41)

 

Fuzz on Bevan’s palms

Flaunted as the transom’s pegged.

Simon, the Boom Operator, tips to the left.

Cut to…billboard puffing the movie show ‘Nosferatu’.

 

Camera 6 whirls to Sabrina Roper

In the ruck of a bee-keepers net.

A schnauzer piddles in floorboards.

 

The relinquished rocking chair teeters

Indicating tea, sandwiches

And a twist-ragged Script Conference.

 

 

 

 

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (42)

 

Smoke machine on a brae…

A hog spews on moss.

Effervescence in dirty sky.

Disfigured colour sergeant gains time,

Pulls out a smooth-bore.

Snigger, incandescent flash.

The dream is taking flesh.

Drumroll on soundtrack – mental note.

The regular steps of the fait accompli

May be fair-weather, deleted.

 

 

 

 

Christopher Barnes first collection LOVEBITES is published by Chanticleer.  Each year he reads at Poetry Scotland ’s Callander Poetry Weekend.  He also writes art criticism which has been published in Peel and Combustus magazines.