Pomegranate

For Jan Dean

Time, you thief, who love to get
sweets into your book
Leigh Hunt

Five pointed star, my pentacle,
how I would lift your jewels
from their case, one by one
on the pin’s point, before
I found a better way.

Now I bite into your leather
with greedy teeth, devouring
your ruby firmaments.
Time’s a thief and so am I,
seizing everything I can.

Time enough for picking out
your treasures one by one
when days begin to bleed
into each other like washed
watercolour sunsets.

Even Persephone could not resist
your glowing fairy-lights.
I garner your seeds for my journey,
on clean parchment draw
my magical five pointed star.

First published in Paper Patterns (Lapwing 2012)

Like many a 50s baby, I grew up with The Beatles. Back then I preferred baby-faced Paul McCartney but later came to realise Lennon was the musician who gave the band its edge. Harrison and Starr were both brilliant musicians, and McCartney is a strong singer, player and songwriter, but without Lennon in the mix, there wouldn’t have been enough alchemy to make that fresh, cheeky, tender and original sound. Lennon was a troubled boy with a difficult background, a rebel, someone whose creativity was multi-faceted. He seemed to be finally settling down with Yoko and his second son, when he was unexpectedly shot down in New York by a random, unstable fan. The shock waves went through all of us who’d followed his career, shock and sorrow as profound as when Kennedy died, when Diana was killed.

A few years ago I visited the homes of McCartney and Lennon…

Mermaid

In her flat above the harbour
she picked crab shells clean
as bones, left taps to run,
opened her tail on corduroy
after her kids, cod-eyed and concertina
cartilage lipped, had fish-tailed off to school.

Out of her element, her bones scraped
under her scales and her skin hung
like bat wings. She was mummifying,
becoming a freak show mermaid,
a tiny dried out effigy; a mackerel tail,
a pin-bone rib cage, an oversized baby-skull head.

Nimble fish came in shoals, in flashes;
the sun spinning over in a bait ball.
They pushed suckered tongues through
paper skin to bleed the salty blue
of mermaid blood. They took the pain
of being dried out. And she swam
back and away over the harbour wall
back to her swimming dream-time, back
to the weightlessness like a water birth.

---

‘Mermaid’ was first published in Wendy’s pamphlet, Lapstrake (Flarestack Poets, 2015).

---

Wendy…

Chris Herbert was serving in Iraq when his right leg was blown off by a roadside bomb.
Here’s what he has to say about anti-Muslim racism:

Getting frustrated by some people expecting racism from me, because I got blown up. Yes. A Muslim man blew me up, and I lost my leg.

A Muslim man also lost his arm that day wearing a British Uniform.
A Muslim medic was in the helicopter that took me from the field
A Muslim surgeon performed the surgery that saved my life
A Muslim Nurse was part of the team that helped me when I returned to the UK
A Muslim Healthcare Assistant was part of the team that sorted out my day to day needs in rehabilitation when I was learning to walk
A Muslim taxi driver gave me a free ride the first time I went for a beer with my Dad after…

tinsel & black wrapping paper

john was here again
this morning
with
sly grins &
nothing
in his hands

said mary
was delayed with all
the ailments of the season

it grows
in scanned corners
dark
& feeding i
am lighter
sleeping we’ll
unwrap presents in the morning

Reuben Woolley has been published in Tears in the Fence, The Lighthouse Literary Journal, The Interpreter’s House (forthcoming) and Ink Sweat and Tears, among others. His collection, the king is dead was published in 2014 and a chapbook, dying notes, in 2015. Runner-up: Overton Poetry Pamphlet competition and the Erbacce Prize in 2015. Editor: I am not a silent poet and The Curly Mind.

A little Christmas poem…

 

© poem: Caroline Carver      © card:  poetry p f     read the poem

It’s lovely to see The Twelve Days of Christmas theme coming up on The Poetry Shed… It brings to mind (well, mine anyway!) that the hit count goes up tremendously at the poetry p f online poet showcase – www.poetrypf.co.uk – twice a year: once on the run-up to Christmas and again (an even higher hike in the counts) in the few days before St Valentine’s Day. It’s good to know that, despite all the accusations of it, poetry these days is most definitely not ‘just for poets’.

Being accessible to everyone with a will to look for poetry is at the heart of the poetry p f aim. The site was created as an open invitation (hence no ‘register and log-in’ to access the site or print-restrictive constructions on it) to all-comers…

Well, here we are in December, and not a very happy world right now.
Let’s hope we can draw a little strength from poetry.

   Creation myths seem to come second to birds in popularity on Keep Poems Alive. This one is our third and they are all very different. Slightly creepy this one perhaps, which our Spider poem is not: it’s about intricacy in a piece of music.

   The other three poems are about people in couples. Separate or together? You decide. This week’s poets are P. C. Vandall, Chris Jackson, Alice Major, Rachel Bentham and David J. Costello.

   Hopefully you’ll keep sending your favourite previously published poems and keep sharing the posts, so that as many people as possible can continue to enjoy all these poems.

 

 

P.C.Vandall
What’s Between Us

What’s between us is this space, dark
matter that makes up billions
of particles…