NEW POEMS
To start this page on our new website we have asked some old friends to send us some new poems.....
Oliver James Lomax
Oliver is a brilliant Manchester-based poet we have been delighted to publish in the past and one of the 15 poets in our debut publication 'Ecstasy & Grief'
The Fox At Cwmdonkin Drive
for Jeff Towns
To think he was Hughes’s Fox would be to confuse this eczema as stigmata. God knows how a stone holds nothing of us in its interior, but some days I need a belief beyond belief, and there you came like fleeting rain, all rust and blood through the rhetoric dawn, not a burning as such but a Rothko blurdom in the low ambered mist, vibrating, ciphered fear, with that pure sacred stare of Gordie Lachance’s Deer. And I recognised that fear, I mean when you are walking around but aren’t really here, and you taught me how to disappear, as your edges became m y edges in the still dark of the morning, lonely as a payphone and carrying this grief like quicksilver, we cocked one eye towards eternity and saw the constellations as an armada of travelling poems, but nothing happened, there was nothing going, as you slowly distilled to this golden inch of the last drink in a blue-collar tavern in Lower Manhattan where we might have toasted all the poets we never even knew existed. My fox will bring his hunger back to Dylan’s garden tomorrow for no witness.
Notes-5 Cwmdonkin Drive is the house in Swansea where Dylan Thomas was born and wrote many of his early poems. It is now restored to its orginal state as it would have been when Thomas lived there and is open to the public [www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com]. Jeff Towns (aka 'the Dylan Thomas guy') is an antiquarian bookseller and expert on the poet and a mentor to the early career of Oliver James Lomax
5 New poems by
Tom Pennacchini
Tom is an actor and self-professed flaneur poet from New York City
Tom is one of the 15 poets in our debut publication 'Ecstasy & Grief' available from Away With Words Press £9.50 +pp
World Traveller
Sitting by the window (they need washing but what the hell) in my room I am armed proper on the peripheral my books radio headset (tune the music in the people out) the sky on the gaze out my thoughts accompanied by the aforementioned lavishments digging on the deep dug in with a breath and a sigh I am ready to go man go
us patterns
starting relative pure bread then becoming honed to it (thanks fam/school/friends!.. a lip smacking steady progression of ruination)
they oft define and at times dissipate disquiet mold shape and perform/play/us
are we our own or our relegated patterns
becoming us and us them patterned upon our patterns floundering from the raw plug-in to an idiot disjoint there’s no zig nor zag just plod-pattern habituating along-clomp-klump-thunk-thunk we cannot truly self reflect our media’s too saturated by socialization
may we aspire to divine ability renewing the source from inside
why the must to rely on the screened stoned hypnotic and not just our own very own accordance duly fleshed
for now a cheeseburger with green soup feels right
patterns destabilized debilitized by patterns
the golden retriever’s patterns beautify our own lacking, lack diminished on lack mandatory fright in perpetual demand
finally hello welcome to our nightmare moving with the motion in flow or detained in sickness live free, breathe or gaggle and gurgle on the stranglehold professor braid dangles one out there to wit: cease procreation until workable and an acceptance of joyous due diligence
the noticer’s have it filling time drains and swallows
Fone head hast thou any thoughts on treetops (boy prof braid sure likes to talk) ahhh leave me swigging twilight fresh flee you’re political inducing wince
shifting light, day’s descension acquisition's acquired consumed and discarded
passed past and over to beginning at begun
Punch-Out the Air
I read some stuff in a book featuring working class themes scribbled by working class folks (how many of them go on to be profs is always bewildering) the tome has got songs poems and short fiction and I like it and find it a refreshing changeup from all the academic type scrawling that’s out there (you galoots know who you are) some of the pomes are real direct and vivid and they describe the scribes sooty hometowns and grittified families.
It occurs to me that they are asserting a pride here. A pride of place and people and it occurs to me I never had it any of that.
Here in the twenty first the word and the we go it alone, your navel your own for wallowing - no subscription necessary and who the fuck needs that kind of friend. But hell here it is.
Beware the time clock. It hits back and remains undefeated.
Prognosis of a Clown
My eyes are
Dimming
My days are dimming
My I is dimming
What is the point in fret?
So much fear in life and so little
life in life
Why all this
shudder and drang?
Hell who are we
(we are hell)
Suckle the factual
We must all
Like the summer
End
A Radiant Interlude
His appearance would in former times have been described as dandy vested with a finely clothed tweed cap despite the heated day and I was struck by the light that emanated from him as he slowly moseyed along clearly wanting to engage and wishing one and all to have a "beautiful day" I decided to make today one of good worth and so I stopped and bade him likewise
he was clearly pleased (I could tell by the beam beaming off him) and he repeated it back to me and I did and he did - it went back and forth
Our parting was a reluctant one but leaving I felt a sincere appreciation for the way of his way and proceeded to step lightly thusly - while being aware and mindful of my breathing - feeling likewise for some of the remainder of the days time and wondering why we all don't aspire to take the time to realize the simple sentiment this evolved soul embodied
In tribute to the gent and before the inevitable dispersal of the vibe I decided that tonight I would light a candle, seize the flicker - let it shine, feel good for the duration and take him up on his tender exhortation
Yeah
copyright Tom Pennacchini [AWW/PP can seek permission from the author]
Peter Thabit Jones
Swansea based Peter Thabit Jones is an award winning poet, dramatist and writer-in-residence in Big Sur California. He is editor of the bi-annual Seventh Quarry Poetry magazine. In addition to many collections of poetry, he has written opera librettos and two plays based on the life and work of Dylan Thomas
IVOR GURNEY IN BARNWOOD HOUSE ASYLUM, GLOUCESTER
Cruel madness fabricated The puzzle of your days, And strange voices climbed The high walls of your nights.
The ghosts of your friends Looked on in despair, As you stared through the prison Of your mind’s illusions.
Your brother betrayed you, Left you in a place of broken People. The screams from their souls Like an erratic melody.
Did the sky of your room Hold thin clouds of memories Of walks through Gloucestershire, The woods and the hills far beyond?
Your past poetry and past music Could not appease the wounds Of your straying thoughts, Heal your heart in the tangled hours.
A confused doppelganger Had descended, and claimed The person who once was you. Fear and shame gripped the moments.
All seemed to autumn In your head. Common sense Rusted in the rain of daytime Nightmares. Reality decayed
In the sentences you said, In the letters you scribbled. You longed for suicide, Longed for a release
From the imagined them, The invasion of those Constantly insulting you, Bullying the silences.
You had been in the trenches Of the First World War, a soldier Alongside your fellow comrades. Now in the confined torment
Of the bleak asylum, You faced the stark truth Like a reflection in a mirror, That the enemy was now you,
That the terrible battle Would be to salvage your life, To regain the leftovers Of your retreating sanity.
Note: Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from manic depression through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals
WRITTEN ON A VISIT TO TINTERN ABBEY (ON THE WELSH BANK OF THE RIVER WYE)
I stand in these ancient ruins,
As I recall reading your famed
Poem when I was a young man,
As the surrounding treed hills
Smoke away leftovers of mist,
As the River Wye moves slowly
In the metre of its freedom
And drizzling rain greys the drab
August day. A poet, I wonder
What you would think now
Of the ongoing decline
Of mankind’s spirituality, it’s need
For materialism, crude and quick,
For instant money, and our blatant
Abuse of Mother Nature. I stroll
Around the towering Abbey,
A skeleton of devotion and worship,
The retreat of monks in their servitude
To their God. Other visitors talk
In respectful whispers. I’m not
Religious, but I could offer
Up a prayer for my fellow humans
That we learn, before it is too late,
To embrace and to enjoy
The sacred moments of life,
The rich depths of silence,
The lush of greenness soothing
The eyes, the vast and beautiful
Tapestry of creation, the free credit
Of a stranger’s sudden smile: and
To treasure and protect this world
For the coming generations.
Note: William Wordsworth wrote his famous poem Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798 whilst visiting the area.
© 2024 Peter Thabit Jones
Phil Knight
Phil is a widely published poet from Neath Port Talbot and leading member of
Neath Poetry and Spoken Word
Snow Haiku
The falling snow shines
Under the bright white streetlight
And night becomes day.
Snow carpets the road
No grit, so now no traffic
And silence can sing.
You just add some snow
And the world turns Christmas card,
It's picture perfect.
Ice cold winter day
There's fresh paw prints in the snow.
Cat seeks hot tin roof.
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICITIMS
"Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed, or ignored."
– Chris Hedges
There are worthy victims, and then
there are unworthy victims.
In London, Coventry, blitzed and blackened skies,
each bombed house a tragedy, each name, a lament.
Each victim a cry for justice.
Across the sea, in Dresden’s fire-lit nights,
it was a price worth paying.
The dead numbers in a ledger,
unworthy of tears, anger or outrage.
Ukrainians killed beneath missiles’ roar—
their grief pierces, deserving of vigil and aid.
Politicians queue to offer support,
while arms dealers eye their chequebooks.
Yet Palestinians, under different bombs,
the very same righteous leaders
tell us their suffering is somehow less.
Their cries muted by politics,
their pain is their own fault
because they voted the wrong way.
And even children must pay for the actions
of their government.
Is compassion so rare it must be rationed,
like bread during famine? Should compassion
be measured, weighed, and kept under lock and key?
Until a committee of wise men decides who
can be deemed fit to receive our tears.
Yet, spilled blood knows no borders, no sides.
Are we so brittle, our hearts so small,
that empathy’s gift can be given to some,
while for others, we turn away, and fall silent?
There are no worthy, or unworthy victims.
There are only lives lost, and broken.
And the dead have no country but the grave.
WE ARE ELECTRIC
We are all electric
Plugged into the national grid.
Connection is compulsory.
It is forbidden to forbid
separation from the whole
of the network and its wires.
Our wishes are not our own
and we share collective desires
to be more than the sum
of our disparate parts,
to share even the beating
of our solitary hearts.
Sometimes the current is
direct and then it alternates
any change in output
is felt by all associates.
For we are all electric
linked by invisible threads
and does not matter if
it is real, or only in our heads.
WHERE IS OUR OWAIN?
Wales is a land where the legends grow,
Like the tale of Owain Glyn Dŵr, you know.
The hero who defied English might,
Who then vanished from history's sight.
Some say Owain sleeps in a hidden cave,
Awaiting the hour when Wales he'll save.
But what if the truth's beyond our ken,
A story stranger than any known by men?
Could aliens have abducted our prince?
Please don't shake your head or wince.
Little gray beings in a desperate plight
Could have beamed him up one cold night.
To lead them in a rebellion in outer space
Against the Daleks, the foe of every race.
Brave Glyn Dŵr would have shattered their ranks,
Leading Vulcan warriors and robot tanks.
The thought of Owain on a galactic mission
May sound to you pure science fiction.
It's unbelievable, you say, this wild scheme,
Yet history's full of many an unlikely dream.
King Arthur invading Norway’s shore,
Or Welshmen as Israel's tribes of yore.
They even claim the Welsh set sail,
To discover America, in a recorded tale.
In the land where dragons roam and bards sing,
The lines between truth, myths, and lies are thin.
So let us ponder, with our minds set free,
The wildest paths of possible history.
Even now, Owain Glyn Dŵr, in realms unknown,
Perhaps still fights, but never alone.
And in the legends of Cymru's pride,
His spirit will always endure, far and wide.
Note: For those unacquainted with Welsh history, Owain Glyn Dwr was the C14th military commander who led a 15 year revolt against English rule in Cymry (Wales) and the last native-born Welshman to claim the title Prince of Wales, summon the first Welsh parliament, and build an independent Welsh church. Never captured or killed, he mysteriously disappeared in 1415. He features in Shakespeare's Henry VI
© 2024 Phil Knight
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