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Recipe for a DJ | Jim Bellamy - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Recipe for a DJ | Jim Bellamy

In-betweens

To hear a dripping tap in a house
that has no tap, in the dead of night
to hear wombs bounce between thunder and tundra
and to kill time forever: these are the flights

That still the gaze of a murmur till
dreaming slices bread from the mill
and balances praise on a bed. To hear the dead
glancing over the saw-tops while Eden is breathed.

These are astronauts of a weed
and serve all laws till the purpose is filmed.
to hear a tap running while the thrill is killed
this is how the tortoise turns into the hills

For each to dilate as the sugar fills
forward through Andromeda, still as the wind,
the blinding tinker does in the skin
and tells that the hill is a house on speed

Till the tiger’s surf finds tears in the reeds
and draws the surface through a dagger of pins
fashioned by the end, the porpoise spins
and drags the lake to find a rose

And drips off the burden of the far-off hose.

this is the envy of the starring loin
whatever the tolling of a rubbished groin,
still is the point of the turning world

Till rapiers paint the eye and dress the curled
and stage lemonades in a dust of dreams-
to hear a tap dripping in a house of screams.
this is the inevitable stable of the wretch

That dies for sweet love as the gibbets deck
each seal in groped cigars?
Be around
To speak about the soul,
Wake early and never suffer summer.
In the morning be as dead-eyed as the cold
Rebuke of nightingales. Be unfound
As whatever the soul suffers and
Whatever suffers thereafter. Roll
In early suppuration made.

In the early morning
Be alive as women walking
To the sanctuaries; alight
As a recorded touch of oil.
But tell the children nothing.
Write about the desert
And all that it extols. Coil
In the island; the
Island enchanted and unenchanted, the
Island inhabited and uninhabited, the
Island in the apple sun.

Say what is like the sea, like a river, like
A fountain in earphones, like
Taped cloud over the sun. by
Memory and mammary, transpose a gallery,
Overshadow the soul immediate and calm.

Your soul is no more than human.

The rising sky must be as a desert, be
So easily played on.

More at https://jimbellamy.simplesite.com.

The Armchair Adventurer | Denise D’Souza - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

The Armchair Adventurer | Denise D’Souza

I grab my coat and leave the house. My cat comes after me.
In the woods we meet a wizard with a crooked knee.
The wizard takes us to a tree where sits an old screech owl,
who sends on our mission. In the night the werewolves howl.
We start an epic journey searching for a magic ring,
Hidden by a dragon, to return it to the king.

We travel with the wizard for hundred years or more.
While sailing round Cape Horn we meet a mighty man o’ war.
We battle with a pirate gang and, captured by the crew,
They take us to an island ruled by a wise guru.
He wears a flowing scarlet robe and eats nothing but rice.
In honour of our visit, he serves pink champagne on ice.

The guru loves our exploits but he disbelieves our tale.
Accusing us of being spies, he has us thrown in jail.
We have no time to wonder how we got in such a fix,
Before we’re rescued by an agent sent by MI6.
By private jet we’re taken up to London in great state.
Just in time to dine with the PM, promptly at eight.

Barred entry to the Ritz because we’re not in evening dress,
We grab a cab and leave, on board the Orient Express.
Cat revels in the luxury, while I’m taxing my brain
With working out the mystery of the body on the train.
Just when I think I’ve cracked the case and know who murdered who,
My suspect has an alibi turn up out of the blue!

I’m safe home from my travels with my cat sat at my feet.
Curled round my owl-shaped cushion in my favourite seat,
I wake as from a dream. All my adventuring is done.
But family and friends have hardly noticed I’ve been gone.
I blink and wonder blearily what news I might have missed,
Then dive into the next book waiting on my ‘to read’ list.

The Fan Club | Judy Moskowitz - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

The Fan Club | Judy Moskowitz

Something has invaded
My psyche
Playing love songs
To my ego
Clawing its way
To the frontal lobe
As it masturbates my mind
From shallow waters to
Exultant jubilee
Making deals
Of quid pro quo
Words unread
With a half moon smile
Blurring the lines
A closed button hole
With a commanding voice
To like the page
Or blood will flow
From hatchets
Without a face
The neighborhood changing
Cut and paste

What’s Appertaining? |  Paul Tristram - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

What’s Appertaining? | Paul Tristram

‘Tis a fine day for furrowing a frown
at random and complete strangers,
being by yourself in the thick of it all.
A spritely strollet down unknown streets,
shaking off the moss as you roll by.
There is far more danger in the mundane,
obvious and inevitable than being down
on Cheapside circling the sharks.
These boots were made for swaggering
and experience is all that really matters,
apart from interesting memories
which are merely mental photographs
of past experiences anyway.
I’d rather glide the afternoon sidewalks
shadow hopscotching and whistling
beautifully alone than be cooped up at home
chained to a TV keeping up with ‘The Joneses’.
There is no other way Out
(Apart from a good book
and you can take one of those with you!)
than actually getting Out!
Tuppence and shillings in my pocket
and I know exactly how to get myself home.
Until then I’m going sideways over there
to have ‘a butchers’ at that shiny thing
then off further into Wonderland I shall roam.

More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.

Before Darkness Lifts |  Marie MacSweeney - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Before Darkness Lifts | Marie MacSweeney

Tracking through frosted grass
to the bright stony silence
of the cairn at Newgrange,
we enter behind a spiralled curbstone,
an interior, dim and dreamy,
our lungs devouring chill air,
our footfall a bodhrán’s beat
on this mid-winter floor,

before darkness lifts
and sun creeps along the passage,
probes those innermost recesses
where ancient dead lay softly
for secret millennia,
and we a hair’s breath away,
painfully scooping out words
to explain what we understand of then and now,
pilgrims on the same inarticulate journey.

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