ALSO APPEARING
BELBRO DAYS By Mike Perkins
I see myself in a place I used to know –
Belbroughton, sat at Rum Alley, just watching the brook flow.
I recall football games on the Rec, highest score 97 – 42:
The garden where us kids scrumped greengages, but nobody knew:
The Canes in Dark Lane, playing serious games of pretend –
Cowboys and Indians, Creatures from Outer Space – days without end.
Bike races non-stop for hours around Woodgate Way:
Playing with Dinkys until only night stopped play:
The happy day I left school for good and got my first job,
I bought home a wage – in old money two pounds and fourteen bob.
The house I lived in for what was twenty years,
Free as I could be – no worries, no fears.
The old folks now mostly gone, I remember them all;
A grave where Mom and Dad rest near the churchyard wall.
I see myself in a place I used to know –
Belbroughton, sat at Rum Alley, just watching the brook flow.
STAND BY ME By Ethna Kelly
When times are hard
Just hold my hand
Take the strain and tell me that
Life is not in vain.
Stand by me.
Your strength has always been
A head above the rest
Your caring and your loving
Has always been the best.
Stand by me.
On this short trip of life we roam
Never knowing where is home
But with you to guide me
I will learn how to be.
Stand by me.
UNTITLED By Sarah Brent
As they say, in the chalice of idleness the puddles float
Though I am yet to find an aperitif to sink my abandoned boat.
As the clouds of apathy gradually emerge
In the warm bath of lacking motivation do I submerge.
Reminding myself that things can be put off until another day
If the chance to lounge arises, not pushing it away.
Never bothering to put the alarm on snooze
Just waking naturally around one for the early afternoon news.
The complexities of the day arrive in the form of cheese on toast
The efforts in creating this I dislike the most.
However, in the pantry of underwear the cucumbers lurk
Though in my case pants in the fridge tends to work.
But do not pity my sorry slum
For in the courtroom of intellect the puddles run.
TEARS ON THE TELEPHONE By Alison Cooke
I've had tears on the telephone
The endings of relationships
Without being face to face
To avoid the disgrace.
I've had unexpected ringing in the night
A vodaphone message to tell me
Someone left a message
Three days ago
Leaving me unable to sleep.
Text is the new tears,
Once sent unable to retrieve
In a language I barely understand
No voice as well as no face now.
Communication removed and reduced
To a few symbols,
Not worth crying about anymore.
RENGAS: These are samples of some rengas done by the Robin Woods group. A renga is a tanka built for two, where one person writes the haiku (three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables) and a second person completes the poem by writing two lines of 7 syllables. All good clean fun.
Pat and Maureen:
On a buddleia
A bright butterfly settles,
Reflecting my life,
As I spread my wings out wide
To embrace all that I can.
Lyz and Paul:
Knot-weed, bind-weed, plants
In wrong places. Their beauty
Still pleases the eye
And assails the nostrils with
Fragrance on a summer breeze.
Fran and John:
Time is the control.
The sunrise, then the moonbeam.
All hours are equal.
Flickering figures command,
Demanding obedience.
An occasional exercise is called a "pass-round," where each member writes one line to start, then passes the line on to the neighbouring member who adds a second line. This continues until each paper has gone round the group.
The usual result is gibberish, though there are exceptions...
A camel and a dromedary shovelling coal
Is better than living on the dole
A bactrian can only give you the hump
But the DWP will destroy your soul
Handing out a meagre lump
That in an instant is swallowed whole
So it's dump all around the room, boys,
Dump all around the room.
His knee caps ached, his elbows creaked
As up the stairs he drunkenly sneaked
His wife was waiting - could he face her?
If he couldn't now, he'd have to later.
'Hello darling' he drooled urbanely
That's why she attacked him quite insanely
'You've had too much to drink again'
So she kicked him downstairs just to make it quite plain.
Will you stop that boys chatter!
If you like, I'll give you his head on a platter
You really are behaving badly
'Tho someone, somewhere, loves you madly...
I'd like to meet them, preferably soon,
While working parts are still in tune
But there's better odds on flying to the moon.
Why lie about your sex life?
When you can "do it" standing up?
It's palm Sunday every day for me!
If I told you the truth you just wouldn't believe it
It certainly keeps you looking fit
I just sublimate these days
And dream of crop rotation.
Childhood memories begin to flow
From under the bridge called Age
Carrying Pooh sticks from long ago
Nostalgia poured from the mind store's page.
Does the river forget its source...
Are we to see their like again?
SEASON OF DREAMS - a song for weary lovers. By Amar Biswas
How is it to know the truth of one's folly?
How to take up that silken hair in artists hands and watch it fly against the wind?
How to find its autumn heart and wend its strands through eager teeth?
How to push ones hands against one's lips and watch the heavens fly?
How to believe and how to dream that all love is all there is?
Nostalgia like an old violin rises up from the pyre of leaves indifferent to our capacity
to hold with tenderness,Rising up like a cobra's tongue - reaching out into solitary spaces that have no
defence against the warm promise of the absolute embrace.
There is no ululation that will suspend the stroke,
No watery eye that speaks reason to the source of passion,
And the dim light of memory assists you not,
For each lick of fire and ice, each brush across the virgin cheek,
These are no currency in a power blind world,
A world with such an accumulation of riches that the world could starve for a billon years without a morsel of humanity,
A world that has laid waste to the poor and the proud,
Such thoughts lay stored on the lovers tongue,
For one who knows strife in love knows also the suffering of others,
His heart is not a coat for the smug and the rich,
But a shield for the lost and the lowly,
Such is the loss that the lover knows,
Ohh, just the trivial lament of passing food between your lover's lips,
And the cruel taunt of surrogate dreams,
That tall enemy of significance and that bearer of change,
For as a willow withers without the presence of a bright star,
So one eternally before the altar of love,
For how can we honour one that has descended into the chaos of material perfidy?
How can we show the rainbow to the snake?