CAUGHT IN THE NET - Fifteen

MAY 2003

Editor - Jim Bennett

Hello again.  Welcome to CITN 15.  This edition features poems read at Jim Bennett's Poetry Night at Borders Books, Cheshire in the UK and the second part of a selection of Anti Love Poems called The Other Side of Love written as a response to a poetry challenge on the PK List.

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 which is 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 1000 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

Mothers Day
by Jim Bennett
 

you are moving from the world

though some say you have already gone

 I can see you lying in the box

a false smile painted on your face

your blue lips red again

 

 I know how much you hated

small dark places

the thought of death

corruption and decay

so you will leave in a flash of light

become a slick against the sky

and with the gentle touch

of the breeze moving in from the sea

drift like a cloud

towards the distant mountains

 

 the dust of your passing

will lie forever

 on the landscape

of my memory

 

a patina that makes me what I am

Sweet Child

by Holly Day

sitting around the blazing fire
in the middle of your room
doing fine, believing lies
until the walls began to move

oh Gomez and Morticia
a smile was left for me
on the front door by your great-grandchild
in a basket blue and green

I took him in and slapped his face
he cried and fell to his knees
and little white spiders fell from his eyes
and followed me into my dreams

oh Gomez and Mortician
you taught your children well
for the thick black webs the spiders spun
have tied me to his hell

for the red, wet cords those spiders spun
have tied me to his hell

 

White Girl

by Holly Day

running  to the parking lot
into the waiting arms
of your heroine-goddess
tall, white
she glows in the dark
your Aryan princess

shoes
gaping black alligator jaws
waiting to engulf your feet
she makes you
put them on

walking through the water
tiny teeth of sand
tasting your toes

and deeper
till you're up to your neck

she
is taller
breasts floating
glowing
under the water
in the moonlight
and she pulls you
down to her
smiling
until the bubbles stop

 

 

 

SQUARE ON

by Kevin Desmond

Remember when we laughed at life square on
in days existing now as only memories held inside
distanced from this moment
by rotation measure time
we'll never halt
or with any words define?

Words will conjure images
and spark all sorts of trains of thought
careering through the mind
like kaleidoscopes of pictures,
but these we only glimpse upon in passing
with internal eyes
that swiftly frame in wordless abstract
any meaning they divine

Words cannot translate
what's beyond the conscious grasp to reach,   
for time like truth is each our own
unfolds unique to one and all
and lives are lived as days have gone
no two the same
beyond the passing of horizons by the sun

And should the echoes of our laughter then return
when suns now set
outweigh the sun's for rising
will their sound be heard by those we leave behind
when our stream of time no longer flows
and lips of life cease smiling?

 

 

MONDAY MORNING

by Kevin Desmond

 

Roy’s going on and showing pictures of the Mona Lisa

All graffitied up.

Read head, dark bits, glimpses at her little buds behind

Smiling. Roy asks about the past

And Ronnie replies. Helen says -

Don’t do no dwelling.

There’s a slide - a quote

From the front page of Figaro

And Roy gets a private laugh on the go with the staff.

Schoolgirl lesbians in the rain is the interpretation

Of a lot of dots.

Roy who I’ll call Dave

Says the cops helped bash up audiences

At Serates so, quote -

Throw an idea not a potato.

Dave’s on about a variety manifesto

By a bloke advocating some impractical practical advice

Because, as he says, art is not a matter of surfaces

Or a product of logic.

Dave mentions when we are creating our art

We’ve got to have a motive

 

his name's don or donnie

by sherry pasquarello


ie, not ny, like donny osmond.
sometimes i hear jack, the bartender
call him fuzzy,"same thing again fuzzy?"
and it always is, pale yellow, whiskey
and water in a small glass
he sits it there in front of that old man, don't
ever think i've seen him raise that glass to his mouth
but i've seen jack set the full ones down.
he never talks much, doesn't move hardly, sometimes
i don't think he's even breathing, not so you'd
notice.
just sits across the scuffed oval bar from me
and i catch myself watching
as he does nothing, wearing
the same faded plaid wool jacket that's
been washed too many times, but not enough, the
lines blurring in the plaid. the fabric fuzzy and i
wonder about that too, fuzzy plaid, fuzzy name.
he has steel grey hair in tight waves across the top of his head.
the kinda wave that was hot stuff in the late forties
early fifties, about the time i was born.
i thought he was toothless, his mouth
has that thin lipped, sunken, loose look about it,
but he smiled at me once and
i saw tiny fragile yellowed teeth
like a cracked china plate.
i wonder, was his mouth firm at one time
was he a good kisser, slow and deep?
did he drive a fast car and get some good girl in trouble?
does he have anyone at home now, anyone that
cares enough to bitch at him cause
he spends his nights , as quiet as
a ghost
sitting across that beat up old bar from me,
and catches me as i watch and wonder?

 

Two Untitled Poems

by  Carol Sircoulomb

 

(1)

live

with a house full of people

alone

every minute

no one knows this but me

i just keep this secret

in my closet

of old clothes

 

 

(2) 

he comes to bed late

I get up early

trying occasionally to touch

but ignored

is this the rest of my life

 

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF LOVE

 

Ha!

by Mick Moss

It cuts to the bone
yeah I KNOW that's a cliché
but fuck it
I'm in too much pain to be creative

A Yaqui sage taught me
that all things are connected
by metaphysical tendrils
reaching out
sensing
the world

Yeah, far out
but You taught me
what pain feels like

Flick a snail
see it retract inside it's shell.

Love?
Ha!

 

love stinks

by Sherry Pasquarello

there's an old rock song with that title
can't fucking remember who sang it,
doesn't  much matter, i know the words by heart,
by heart, ha!
it was a selection on the jukebox where i hang.
me and a friend, we used to play it a couple of times
ah, more than a couple, every friday and saturday night.
we'd sing love "sucks" instead of stinks,
suck being shouted.
his girlfriend tending bar didn't like that too much.
we did.
he married her, needed a steady income and a place to live.
love sucks.

READ AT BORDERS

Rumours

by Jim Bennett

.

As I stopped at the park gates

Buckowski’s book fell open

on a crack backed page

a page that held a poem

about a soldier, his wife

and a bum

I read the poem

as Charlie waited patiently

.

it makes me think about war

they way Buckowski must have

when he wrote it

 .

we are on the verge of war again

everyone is thinking about war

wondering where it will lead

most people don’t want it

but we will do it anyway

.

from up on the hill

I watch Charlie running round

digging in the sand dune roots

and biting at the wind

. 

before we came out

someone said there was war in the air

but here without the commentary

.

I can only taste the salt

The Water Tower in my View.

by Gill McEvoy

. 

I’m growing very fond of you:

Each day when I open my curtains,

There you are, bold in my window,

Like a big bouquet.

.

At night when I lie sleeping safe inside

You stand there, Guardian of the sky,

Propping up the moon and stars.

.

I love the way your painted metal rim

Attempts to match the blue of sky,

Your own blue rusting at horizon’s seam.

.

When evening falls the Evening Star peeps

Shyly from your shoulder; the sun set fire

Lights up your brick like flame: my room is filled

With warmth as pink and comfortable as love.

.

As daylight shrinks your bricks close up

Like winks: drawn into some private share of secrecy,

I think you are directing them at me.

Breathing in Cloud.

by Gill McEvoy

 

Last night cloud came down on the farmhouse roof

Like a weight of feathers.

This morning I part the web of air with my hands,

Feel a rain finer than mist touch upon my skin.

Trees I cannot see shed steady drips onto a

Lawn of silver dew, and silver spider nets

Sag upon the bushes, fat pockets hung to

Trap the diamond fall of rain.

The day is haunted by absences;

No crickets crooning in the summer grass,

No butterflies, nor bees;

The world is wrapped in a wool of silence

And I am breathing in, not air, but cloud.

 

LIKE SOAP BUBBLES

by Maureen Weldon

 Winter: like soap bubbles

in a washing-up bowl.

This will not last,

this cup, that plate,

the garden reflecting in my eye.

Or my lover who used to hold my heart,

who has a golden tongue

- a gift for music.

 

I brushed his body

with my long red hair.

It was Christmas that day,

it is Christmas now:

green crates of decorations,

bottles of wine, flickering candles.

I see them on my kitchen window

mirrored in fairy-lights

and parcels of secrets.

 

From the hall, three little boys

are singing, 'Silent Night,'

to the rhythm of their money-box.

Now my daughter shuts the door,

the sound goes round and round.

In the sink the suds have sunk,

in the centre: a star.

 

 

FREEDOM

by Maureen Weldon

Wakes up,

Bang...

The guy overhead

Leapfrogging...

 

The Fortune Teller

Told her:

No close relationships...

She pulls the duvet

Over her head.

 

On the radio, 7 a.m., News...

Huge war-ship

On it's way to Iraq.

Laurie exhibition - largest

In the World -

Old Trafford, Manchester...

And Big Brother:

1994? 2002?

 

As she hangs out

The unlucky dress she wore

Driving three hundred miles,

And missing the show...

 

But of course she knows,

It could all be -

Far, far worse.

 

(First published Poetry Monthly)

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 july 2003 - look out for it in the in-tray

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