CAUGHT IN THE NET - Eleven

JUNE 2002

Editor - Jim Bennett

Hello again. This is Caught in the Net number Eleven. The inclusion of poetry "READ AT BORDERS" has proven to be popular and I hope to expand this area over the next few issues.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.

POLICY - My thanks go to everyone who has submitted work for inclusion in this issue and my apologies to those I could not include. I follow a policy of publishing several pieces by the same author in order to enable the reader to see the range of the poets writing, but if space does not allow I may publish the same poet in several editions.

Please note that no particular spelling convention has been followed and the spellings used reflect the national usage of each contributor.  We are always looking for new poets and poems for CAUGHT IN THE NET and our other, web based, magazine TRANSPARENT WORDS both of which are hosted on the site of PK POETRY LIST   The PK Poetry List is a poetry workshop and discussion list.  Anyone interested in joining the list or in finding out more can do so at the main PK site which is at -

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9952/index.htm  

There are already over 950 subscribers to CITN but please feel free to pass it on to your friends.  

Copyright Notice - All the work produced in this ezine is the copyright of the individual authors and cannot be reproduced without permission. All writers have exerted their moral rights to be identified as the author of their work.

Submissions - always welcome - please send to - caught_in_the_net@hotmail.com

after a visit to London when all had gone well
by Jim Bennett

black beetle taxies crawl curbs

while crushed glass voices

shriek for attention

an underpass opens legs wide

sucks in the worms

excretes congestion

onto constipated streets

that stink of death

outside, the river

wind churned turns grey

bridges lines against

the blue black sky

birds on bankside

peck for crumbs

suspend on wind currents

then drop swallowed

by the river

erupt

waterspray and blood

back into the air

spit stained pavements

drip into gutters

umbrellas joust

people mouths moving

speak

or want or wait to speak

or dribble

beg unnoticed

for attention

poster colours run down walls

eye suck advertising

screams about an exhibition

of surreal art at the Tate Modern

razor blades at eyes
sharp enough to cut you

I don’t think I’ll go

Scent of roses.
Roger Cliffe-Thompson

I caught the scent of roses,
whilst trying to type away my grief.
November gray a bleak-yard day.
no growth within/without ...
and yet still the scent of roses.

I hurled lead weights sky high,
a manic clashing hysteria , punishing
my exhausted frame for living in
a world who took my mum away...
and yet still the scent of roses.

Is that all my son? The Father smiled
as I questioned him in the shower.
The smell of flowers is to let you know,
she's o.k...
now there is no scent of roses.

The Photograph
by Nicola Harding

The shade which you long to see,
Just black and white
The eyes which you want to cry for,
In a forever stillness, imprinted on a sheet of paper,
The edges crumpled, faded from the winter sun.
His voice so discrete silenced from the changing times,
No longer echoes from the peeling walls.
His smile never there when you awake,
Existence now a chore.
The longing remains like a darkening hole,
Trying to bloke away the past
You gaze into the plaster ceiling,
And as curtains billow in the starry sky,
You kiss his sweet lips goodnight.

REMEMBERING THEM
by Fred Johnston


The old admired the old

For their wounds, their age.

Always they moved round me,

Solicitous, big as wardrobes,

Fanatic as a pilgrimage.

From their broken tongues
Dripped news of tumours, stroke,

Lungs bellowing blood, the brain-

Clot out of nowhere,

Death-rattles in the throat.



They moralised: You never

Know the day nor the hour -

They paraphrased Christ, the

Syntax of the needy,

A sickly faith of the poor.



Dying, they haunted blank

Houses, hedges rampant, windows

Petulant. I'd had enough while

Young of their mad distances,

Their shut mouths, eyes and doors.

HILARIOUS
by Fred Johnston


He watched her wade from counter to table

In the glutinous smog of a dole afternoon;
Obese young girls goo-gooed their children

While a world groped its way to the pub.



Let there be rain, he said out loud: Let

There be rain as miserable as sin –
May a grey wet weight of nothing at all

Bury the lot of you. And your children.



I can’t go out with a man who shouts,

She told him. I can’t abide noise. And

Look, these poor girls had just put their

Children over to sleep. You’ve woken them up.



They’ll never waken, that’s the point,

He said. He was making a terrible show.

And neither will their children. The red

Round girls turned in red faces,


Cigarettes held high over the floor:

Madman, one of them said. Should be

Locked up. He was crying now:

I am locked up. The fat girls laughed.

LEARNING
by Fred Johnston


(i.m. John B. Keane, playwright)



A poet is a brick in the wall

Of the house of ourselves –



A song is a thatch sturdy

In the face of the world –



A poem is birds nesting
In the eaves of our mother’s house –



A singer is our father

Sitting down to a full table –



Quiet is the grass of our learning,

Green the wind in the roof-beams –



God is a man with a story,

Saying: Listen and learn your names.

Prodigal
by Gabrielle Lindemann

I

I wander. Purposefully away. From mementoes. From keepsakes. From
places and friends and home. From reminders.

I wander. Aimlessly forward. Into challenge. Into adventure. Into the new
and the blue and the black void that is without you.

I wander. Nowhere. No place. Where worlds are spawned and life is tossed
upon shores. Cast away. Outcast. Spent. Serpent. A snake in waiting.
Flaking. Hoping to shed my love like a skin.

II

I am not alone.

I carry your picture. Etched into my retina. Superimposed. Imposing.
Obliterating all that could be. Could be without you. Blinded by your image
I must go blind. I hurl my gaze toward midday. Toward zenith.
A rendition in light. Paling. Impaled by shafts brooking no shadows.
Burning out. Down to a speck. Eye to eye. I step into the darkness of
beginnings.

And hear your voice. Driving my thoughts. Supersonic. Supreme.
Speeding me along waves of possible conversations. Infinite Permutations.
Down the maelstrom of ifs and what ifs. Toward the barrier of finite
probabilities. To ground. To impact. I explode into absence. Into silence
that does not remember your name.

And a body entombed by your touch. Embalmed by seed. Putrefying into
acid. Burning. Fire. Desire branded. Bandaged. Atrophied layers of hands
and lips and skin. Mummy. Dummy Laid out. On offer. An offering for
their hacking and pounding, Chafing and grating. Away and into and over
again. Love ground to dust. Ashes to ashes. Virginity rising. Reborn.
Flying from the carcass of recognition.

I am not.


III

First light returns the prodigal. His face the colour of sea and sand and
sunrise. The face of a stranger. He speaks my name. I do not resonate to
the timbre. The shriek of a gull. A kiss. Finding no purchase it hovers.
Balloons. Bloats, bulges. Bursts upon pangs of regret.

A figure yields to distance. Withdrawing. Drawing me. Beckoning with
crumbs. Inciting hunger. Trailing me along the scent of tobacco and coffee
and something faintly remembered Vaguely puzzling. Oddly painful.

Stifled, I exhale. First breath snaps the cord, purges the haze. Dries my
face. A mirage. I am solitary. Solid.

I am.

It was an afternoon
by Prasenjit Maiti

It was an afternoon
when she walked out of our lives

leaving me to savor our dinner

cold and alone

like a heartless collation

She was spread like fresco
by Prasenjit Maiti

She was spread like fresco
against the rock as I saw her

I like the way young women smell
my cheeks brushing her tender breasts

our lips were smothered and bleeding
and we were taken in for moments

eyes closed and serene

like everlasting stones

Light Through the Darkness
by Robert Quantrill

I arose from the dark, Peering through the rubbles
Crawling out of my past, away from my troubles
Though covered in dirt, My past congealed on me
I opened my eyes, for something new to see
Through struggle and strain, I set myself free
Looking over the Debris, At something new to be
Though through hell and back, I some how survived
My struggle was long, but I came out alive
Through times of need, I put a smile on my face
I got to the top of the mountain, I came first in my race
What I considered the end, I walked towards the light
Not turning back, I reached with all my might
To the light through the darkness.

READ AT BORDERS

City of Culture
by Jim Bennett

start on bricks
add the people - the I who have
then I who have nothing

there is something
see if a people see
looking for a city's strength
looking good
trivialised
because trivialise is in the viewpoint
see the city of us

Liverpool

we work writing
human for ourselves
and of pieces a side of a face
a face of subsistence
of where the desperate
bring misery

so you mostly take on
the form of squalor
shut sad as if ashamed

Liverpool while first aside
accept reflection
a struggle in diversity

raise another state
at stake the state
that inhabits kindly
but I and us have
no direction home
lost because
people lost hope
turn don't position
don't do snapshots
one shot failure
write of the problems

the homeless
protect people
create underclass
what is not should be
the Liverpool that is


who writes of the system
and worth of city
cries for Liverpool
everyone from people
drug foisted everywhere

history induced
and who is history
it's crap money but it happens
need your eyes and everywhere
talking only of architecture
banks own the wit

we have been the way of poverty
suffering people
living think say
what this picture is

Liverpool
city of culture

 

 

Holding on.
by Gill McEvoy

The rose boughs dip with the weight of buds,

The morning opens to the sun.

The dampness of dispersing dew

Steams warm between my toes.

Under a lazy leaf of green

Hangs a perfect yellow snail,

Doing nothing,

Holding on.

It is good to be

In the early, shining day,

Barefoot in the garden of a friend,

Watching rose leaves,

Doing nothing,

Holding on.

 

Skylark, the sound you can see.
by Gill McEvoy

It pauses for breath,

Then with a push of wings

Swims upward through the air,

Pause and push, pause, push,

All the time singing,

Scattering notes like pennies,

Bold in the copper air.

Visible for such heights

Its climbing dark spot

Ploughs up the pale sky

Then it is gone -

All I can see now is the song,

Descending, descending,

Like a ladder to the earth.

Studying Insectivorous Plants (Sarracenia)
by Gill McEvoy

Sarracenia in a ditch,

Murky ditch, dirty ditch.

I, driving, looked which

Had me skidding in the ditch,

Dirty ditch, murky ditch.

Eye to eye - sonuvabitch!

With sarracenia in a ditch.

 

Food Chain.
By Gill McEvoy,

Dizzily dancijmg,

Never collidying,

Gnats mut-mut mm'murmg,

Zip up and down.

Murky depths far below,

Frog eyes bug-bigbig grow:

Gnatgnats for suppering:

One mighty spring!

Splat of a whip-like tongue

Gnat's life is briefly done!

Fat frog free falling down,

Cat-eyes grow roundy round;

Out shoots a flick-slick paw:

Snatched up by sabre claws,

Frog's life is done!

Fat cat all smuggy grin,

Frog dangling from its chin,

Leaps for the fence too thin,

Flattens its body in,

Ripe for a spring:

Dog sleeping down below,

Paws upon dreamy chin,

Ears tick attentively,

Hears the fence wobbly,

Opens eye carefully,

Lifts up an easy paw

And, like a gin-trap jaw,

Clamps down on cat:

Fat cat and gnatgnat,

Gnat, cat, and frogfrog

All end in dogdog.

 

Afterword

 

email Jim Bennett - jimbennett11@btinternet.com - tell us what you think.

An archived version of Caught in The Net is available at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9952/index.htm  

where you can join the mailing list and the PK Poetry List

 

Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net.

Next edition due at the end of September 2002 - look out for it in the in-tray

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