generic serif;”>Blur
shop serif;”>Play me some feverish music
and kiss me oh-so-sweetly;
Rolling waves of subtle sensuousness.
A flurry of staccato pulse beats
and hot soft lips.
A.H.
AFTER KANDINSKI
Lines, circles, squares, tableaux,
Interconnected,
Unconnected;
Extreme light
Dancing across imaginary boundaries
And intersecting with luminous heartfelt splodges;
Mysterious intergalactic shifts of natural rhythms
Forged into a new dawn backwards
Through incoherent spaces;
Burning blue violets
In a wave of overwhelming darkness that circles
And hovers unconditionally over a rumbling facade;
Remarkable escapades in learning, in unlearning,
Dripping in a haphazard manner
Into pools of strange metals;
Weighted deftness
Slipping intermittently between gauges,
Lofted and dropped in broken parameters – outside;
Deja vu angles
Crossed with diverse riddles in a precise manner,
Overlapping and underlapping;
Reduced masses of compressed air
Redirected through prisms of white heat
Evaporating in black circles;
Patterned nowheres
Gliding fabulously, effortlessly, past hoops of wild fire,
Reddened with the knowledge of birth;
Untouched vertical lines
Fight for position
With parallel right angles.
Michael Donohue
Untitled
Wandering through jagged trees:
Twisted, angular, wound like corkscrews and
Beautiful. Weaving through the cold air
Jagged in your throat.
A curl of fingers in the sleeves of a coat,
and a bird,
Lonely,
Flits, and flits again,
Searching for an ease of
Conscious living.
Survives.
Dewdrops like beaded crystals
Are strewn among the hoary frosts.
Wait, quivering and terrified
To be bound in the encroaching
Mass of stillness.
Their quivering slowed, their eyes lethargic,
To wait once more
For the release of photons,
A transfer of energy
And a re-instilled fear of
Confinement.
I stomp through
Taking pictures,
Avoiding the frosts for the sake of my toes.
Champing and steaming,
Releasing frost bait
And unaware of that symmetry.
The fragile tank of air,
Our reserve, stirs fretfully
As I photograph my mother.
Turned away, her arms outstretched;
A scarecrow with nothing to scare,
Embracing the tank
That stirs fretfully.
I watch as she grows smaller
Through my lens,
Trees either side growing,
Aspiring upwards.
Draped in signs of the
Purity of the air
That stirs fretfully.
Maybe I should not be there.
Maybe I should not be here,
Disturbing the air
Already disturbed
By a child,
Curious,
Making ripples in a goldfish bowl.
I look to calm with my camera;
To create stillness with a frame.
To capture a moment
Between two movements
Or to show what would otherwise not be seen
By those who are not me.
Liv Carrington
CHICKEN RUN
Discovering
more and more
who I am
what makes
me tick
Reading
to expand
and breathing
to calm
a thundering heart
still wary of
strangers
But I do
not want
that
half-gasp
watchful
life
To realise
I am scared
of what?
to realise I
am scared
but I do not
have to be
Fear’s all in the mind
As Mr. Tweedy
from Chicken Run
was always reminded
“It’s all in your head”
(even though he was wrong)
JH
FATHER
Every now and again I dream about my father. We walk up tall hills and down deep valleys, through forests and fields which cover the earth like skin. The air is cold, stingy and I can see our breath turn to steam as it escapes our mouths, and then rise in clouds, up, above our heads, through the tangled limbs of trees. We rest, and through an opening we see the glow of settlement.
Why do the Dublin city lights flicker, Dad?
I don’t know. I’ve never been.
Again we go and as we walk we do not speak, and when we happen to speak we do not talk. We are cowards, him and I. The leaves aren’t afraid and when they die under our big black boots they do not scream. They murmur stories of the fresh spring winds and the pleasant sun to which they were born, the innocence and the joy. The summer which came after, oh how pleasant! Full of energy, animated, yes, by a gentle breeze, yes, they whisper. The leaves do not tell of Autumn. It is too sad.
Their energy fills me. I channel their courage now.
I can see the lights out my window, Dad. Sometimes I look out and I think of that Christmas when you told me to look up at the moon and the stars, do you remember, Dad? You said our gaze would cross, because eyes see further than the feet can bring, but I couldn’t see any stars that night, Dad, and the moon was hiding too. So I looked at the city lights, Dad, and they flickered just like that, but I knew you couldn’t see them, so was that good enough Dad? Was that good enough?
Most of the time I wake up before he answers and that is a good thing.
Amadeusz Kepinski
Spicy Gum
there’s something calming about it,
kind of like my second girlfriend
my first real one,
who I used to kiss
after school only,
who used to kiss me
only after school,
it’s kind of like that.
she used to chew spicy gum
and take it out of her pale pink mouth,
just before I said hello.
and it was all cold then
between eyes and chins,
and that was nice.
it’s kind of like that,
so I take another sip
NJ
