October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Invitation From Hopper
She leans forward into the bay window.
Water, a long way off and a loon cries.
In the room, a man speaks,
someone listens. Expectations
are set in motion. She remains
frozen at the window, waiting,
not a matter of time. The call
of the loon carries over the water.
Expectations have a way of shifting.
Though The Scream has been stolen,
Oslo keeps its appeal, the train ride
a preliminary. Formal introductions
have their own façade. Do you
bow or let your eyes reach
their own conclusions? So much
has entered, rushing to fill the gap.
Still she leans into the morning light.
The thicket, green and familiar,
doesn’t distract. Out there,
the air has a yellowness, lifting
from the tall growth gone dry.
Anticipation holds, a thread not quite sewn.
by Peggy Aylsworth
By The Grace Of
The orange moon
plays the banjo, hot tempos
over blackest night
as the city bravely lights its tower-tops.
The beat
presses through glass.
Ovens blister
the sleepless in New York.
All things interior
breed new eyes, opening to the unseen,
held for the perspicacious
to uncover in the star-hung night.
Delicate lights
signal windows, signal pauses
for thought,
a revelation luminous as the moon.
Country calls can almost
be heard,
but their value
escapes
the impeded.
Night birds have nested
in the lungs
of many born in tall grass
gone dry,
grown foreign.
by Peggy Aylsworth
October 2012 | poetry
Destiny
While you are dealing the cards, your face is stoney and noble,
You observe your victim like a sphynx.
I escape to the casino table,
Because I don’t have much left,
Just an old family heirloom ring
And very little hope
That I shall avoid seeing you in the croupier’s uniform,
Or the habit of a butler
Who is serving death.
My place is at the casino table.
The emptier my pockets,
The hungrier my passion.
I’ve heard the restless voice of a gambler:
“Perhaps I shall once manage
To deceive destiny… Perhaps…”
And the voice vanishes in the echo of many a gambler’s sigh.
You once again decided to scourge me,
Your shiny hand throws the white ball.
Who knows whose bones this white ball was made of,
This ball that dances so seductively
In front of the inebriated man’s eyes?
Will my bones end up
In its white interior tomorrow?
It didn’t take you long, destiny,
To throw me out into the street
With an empty wallet and a vacant gaze.
Now I stare into this empty night,
And death awaits below the old oak tree
That has accusingly raised its bare branches
Into this empty night.
Do not wear the black butler’s suit, destiny,
Let death wait.
I know you will comply, destiny,
You don’t like those who play it safe,
Because there is me in you,
And there is you in me.
Throw another one, destiny!
by Walter William Safar
Newborn Verse
I could write a new verse today
About two roses
That we laid down onto the black soil
When we parted,
Perhaps even a poem
About the warm tears that were mutely sliding
Into the cradle of your wonderful soul.
I could call you loudly,
Without shame and boundaries,
Like a bird calls another bird,
But my throat is trapped by silence
Born to powerful solitude.
Yesterday, I loved you less than I do today,
And the living memories are proof of that,
Memories that are warmly flowing
Through the dreamy summer air,
Like blood is flowing through veins.
In the silence of this summer day I could write a poem
About our last dance below the old walnut tree,
From which the beautiful memories still emanate,
But the sun is still so cold without you,
Shining like gold:
Cold and deadly blinding.
When solitude tends to my heart with sadness,
All I have left are memories
To give birth to a verse
Like a wonderful child of hope.
While the present haunts me into the past,
I haunt my spirit towards the sun’s golden cradle,
So it would become a blood brother to the newborn verse,
Because I might see you tomorrow
And read this poem to you.
by Walter William Safar
Old Oak
In the shadow of solitude now I see Your eyes,
that so faithfully carry about the light
through my thoughts so dark,
and the pen trembles in the hand,
waiting for the prodigal son’s acknowledgement.
My one and only, acknowledgements arrive in solitude’s embrace,
just like tears, and where there is a tear, there is love,
always faithful and invisible but so real
that you can touch it with thoughts
and with the fiery breath in the infinity of solitude.
I admit to using my verses as ransom for my guilt,
(and guilt is my silence),
and I listen to the rumor
that perpetually, like a bat,
whirls across the lonely poet’s street.
They say that me and You,
my one and only,
are fantasy, but a pen immersed in ink.
But You know, don’t You,
that me and You are perfectly real, full of wishes,
dreams and memories.
My one and only, I am listening to the whisper of the wind
in this warm, dreamy summer night…
It is silent, horribly silent without You,
and the wind’s whisper is dying down, farther away, oh so far,
as if called by death to its black hearse,
and I have waited for so many days, months and years to appear,
to bring Your voice to me,
gentle, soft, warm and yearning,
but it is so silent, oh so silent now,
that I can hear the screams of solitude
chase away memories
into this warm summer night,
my one and only, I am standing in the shadow of the dignified oak,
and I am looking into his empty sleepiness,
as if its playfulness left along with You,
it is silent like the wind.
Its dear, green, eternally waking young leaves,
who used to whisper in Your vicinity, untrammeled and confidential,
are completely silent now, completely dead.
Now I am trembling in the shadow of our oak,
fearfully looking at it as it drags its dignified old face along the ground,
its memories are as lively as mine.
Once, yes, once the memories,
who live so inaudibly,
shall become so weak,
so humanly weak,
that they shall find their dark home
next to our wooden crosses.
by Walter William Safar
Walter William Safar was born on August 6th 1958 in Sherman-Texas. He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden fog”, “Chastity on sale”, “In the flames of passion”, “The price of life”, “Above the clouds”, “The infernal circle”, “The scream”, “The Devil’s Architect”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Herb Robert
The pale-pink spikes of Herb Robert
recede in hedgebank’s galaxy
of buttercup, harebell and phlox
unsucked by butterfly or buzzing bee;
one visitor alone alights
on its unfancied petal- fair
hard to tell if wasp or fly-
its pungent nectar to imbibe.
As in the case of flowers spurned,
insects that seem grotesque,
everyone and everything
is each by nature blessed
with purpose and the gift
of love and being loved;
and for their very difference,
by only fools are scorned.
by Mike Gallagher
Car Park
Blonde: Tall
Legs: Long
Jeans: Blue
Coat: Brown
Colours: Clash
Beauti: Fully
Long legs
Long strides
This way
Bygone
Old man
Dream on.
by Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher was born on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland. He lived in Britain for forty years before retiring to Lyrecrompane, Co. Kerry. In Ireland he has been published in The Doghouse Book of Ballad Poems, Irish Haiku Society, Revival, The Stony Thursday Book and Crannog; outside Ireland, his poetry and prose has been published throughout Europe, America, Canada, Japan, India and Australia. He won the Eigse Michael Hartnett viva voce prize in 2010 and is a current nominee for the Hennessy Award. He is the editor of thefirstcut, an online literary journal.
