FROM LIVERPOOL - EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2008

CAUGHT IN THE NET - Twenty One

September 2004

Editor - Jim Bennett

Hello.  Welcome to CITN 21.  As always I am grateful for all the help and support I have received from the poets who have contributed and who continue to contribute.   I still welcome submissions to CITN and look forward to reading them, but it can take up to six weeks for me to get back to you and let you know so please have patience.

Poetry Kit Magazine is an webzine which appears on the poetry Kit site which can be found at - http://www.poetrykit.org/   I am seeking submissions of poetry, reviews, essays, articles and illustrations for that magazine.  When submitting please ensure that the magazine title to which you are submitting is clearly marked in the subject line of any emails.  

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 1500 subscribers to CITN so to keep this number growing please 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 asserted their moral rights to be identified as the author of their work.

Submissions - always welcome - please send to - jimbennett11@btopenworld.com   Please mark as "submission CITN"

 

Dawn Strikes the Keyboard

by G.R.Bradwaj
 
 
I sit alone as my keyboard awaits the
Dance of the fingers
on its keys,
Each stroke unique
and scattered,
Entrapped are swimming poetic images, that seek clarity.
 

I see the night
Has brought the sounds to a halt;
Slowly, one by one, silence consumes,
All movement, flow quietly downhill from the past.
Nothing is in motion but my mind,
as it escapes into a world,
Lost to cobwebs of time.
 

The more that I think,
Images further recede,
Each one, cascades into the other,
and as I write
A page no longer reflects a single thought.
Each fleeting image cries
Frame me in immortality.
 
The lights that shine
No match for starless nights.
I ponder
Is there fairness in life?
Or is it only cold carbon that's every man's birthright
The night yields no answers
Dawn strikes the silent keyboard.
 

The following poems by Rosemarie Crisafi are all part of a longer series

Mosaic

by Rosemarie Crisafi
 
A deer, a peacock, a lion,
Ox, sheep and a winged man
A man holds a key 
A fountain sprays and hawks soar
A finger seizes near the mouth in awe
Pears and oranges nest in date palms 
Vast arms encircle the sphere
Large eyes float
In mixtures of straw, sand,
Marble dust and water
Painted with dyes blended from eggs, vinegar, wax,
Honey, and almond gum
With pine and mastic resins
Small stone and ceramics form
Enamel faces
On the vault, at the domed east end
Encompassing the nave
In the half-moon apse
Ochre adds humility to white paint
And inset gold and garnet cubes
From the East, daybreak pours
Flooding the valley
luminous
Drenching me in the Alpha and Omega
A dove spouts water
On a purple haloed throne
In the garden
Christina cradles a seashell
 
 

Christina's House

by Rosemarie Crisafi

Houses hum peacefully along the street.
Father's geraniums grow.
He loved her.
He composed a rune on her wrist;
Snapped stars, brittle crackers, between his fingers;
Slapped mortar on bricks to build his hearth;
Stoked the fire, stirring with steel, making it hot;
He lingered tenderly over tomatoes and flowers,
Embedded root balls in soil.

 

A Ghost Rose 

by Rosemarie Crisafi

On an insensible face,
he planted his roses.
Soft halos blushed,
encircled deeper organs,
bound by outer rings of jade.
Outmost green enclosed
to shield them from harm.
A corolla loosened.
Burgundy bursts
into the small leaves.
A thorn pierced.
Pink tissue gave.
Crushed, buds abandoned blooms.
Petals fell.
A ghost rose.

 

Geraniums

by Rosemarie Crisafi
 
On a cellar ledge
in a clay jar, webbed leaves
crept from their chamber. Rounded
huddles of saucer flowers
wore pointed cardinal  caps.
Droplets beaded on palms. Roots
tunneled
into coffee,
an unseen rectory,
dim nursery for two geraniums.
In father's underground Vatican, he
fell victim to a small girl
with his hot nerve and a wiry stem.
The robe torn, she stole his hat.
and fled, having executed justice.
When he found the relic, he burned
incense.
Startled Christina cried
cheeks on fire. 
 

Rose Windows

by Rosemarie Crisafi

In a church, panels swirl.
From a gold chalice grape wine
pours in with dawn.
At the alter the couple weds
body to body,
revived nightly,
tousled and knotted,
they lie face to face.
They see in the mirror.

Christina wears Andromeda chains
not even her firemen could break,
not even her robbers could crack.
Her face misplaced in the goblet,
she stares from a glacier
embedded, a numb bug. in the thick prism. She hides,
anesthetized, under a frozen surface.
Alive under the frost,
her pale face and pink lips.
utterly forgotten.

Daughter of a rose
sister of rosebuds
she sees only embroidered lead
dyes and paint
entwined and divergent lines
cast in metal and ice.
She does not see her reflection.

In the kaleidoscope, she cannot control
the relentlessly changing shapes
of the rose window.
At the end of the long tunnel,
She cannot remove the layers worn--- so many clothes.
Christina sleeps in cathedrals.
Over her bed, concentric circles spin,
She awakes to wheels of colored glass.
 

The Ghost

By Rosemarie Crisafi 

Now is the moment in summer
when in our life
the airy, fragrant spring clouds disappear.
Descending the gorge's depth,

falling near a phantom
so far ill-fated in this country,
the gauze thins, pale and empties its radiance
that opens and shuts, like eyes.

Scrambling in the dusk it's easy
to mistake them for cats--
furry, that is--the glossy ones:
Stripes going up on black,

or raccoons in shadows.  With a coil,
they march and then linger, take it in stride;
except when disturbed they raise
the bright stars in Orion's belt,

advancing, plodding, gravely
and unexpectedly leaving,
or, in the updraft from a ravine,
slowly growing vulnerable.

This evening a young small one arose.
It sprouted like a lily of water
inside the vale in front of the cave.
The rain trumpeted.  Christina smelled the odor

of a solitary male in summer,
with tapered streaked forehead
white running to his tail but
we fled from the churring.

The den abandoned. Unhurried
friendless, grubbing for larva
the skunk seized the gully,
globed nose dropped, thick tail lifted,

and then a she strolled out,
growling at her astonishment.
So lush- a sinus full of pungent dread
from erratic, heated nostrils.

Ghostly.
screech and alarm,
as white flashed in twilight.

 

 

---

 

Allergy

by Carolyn Edwards

 

 

I have all the symptoms

nervous cough

reddening of the skin

moist eyes

 

been explaining

til I am dry in the throat

 

there must be something in the air

 

something you bring in

on your clothes

 

or the dusting of pollen

that has settled in your hair

 

spare bee stings

on your skin

 

some malevolence we share

when you touch me

 

as if you know

 

what the trace of something

on your lips

will do

 

how I will say

 

it is simply something

in the summer air

 

wind borne and drifting

in through the open window

 

 

 

---

 

Mademoiselle du Mer

by Carolyn Edwards

 

I stand in silence on the sand

close my eyes and hear

the sad soft breaks along the shore

hear siren voices beneath the surf

and wade in

fighting the surge

feel it whip against my shoulders

slam and break

gobble and burble in my ears

as sound expires and resurrects itself

in different clothes

 

as I drive in further

I stumble against the drone of whale song

tread the bass of their thunder

like old forty fives

at seventy eight

blend it with the snare of dolphin song

feel the sway of slow, spaghetti hair

and rock with custard limbs

until the noise fills my head

breaks in my lungs

and takes me, dancing

into the never ending chorus of the blue

 

 

---

 

 

Two Cosmic Chasms In
     The Same Sewer
by Daniel Gallik


Acton said to himself
he was going to make
a most assured debut,
that in this girl’s

history she would not
have seen a finer man.
Such the lies he told
himself all the time.

If you knew him he was
like self parody, like
a thrill no one had
had; even sophisticates

couldn’t see his truth.
A smart-ass wasn’t Ac-
ton.  Wasn’t even good
playing the part.  She

was shrewd as Fagan.
And not a witty cynic
about it all.  Blue-
eyed, a shape, blond

and full of wash.  Big
was her name.  Like, in
Brooklyn, around 1963,
2 charmers met; loved.

 

 

---

 

A Yank Flees His Father For Death
by Daniel Gallik


I knew these people and the death
that is Mark Allen Goldman said a
woman that used to be women.  She
added that I used to be a genius
and now I can hardly hold up my
busta.  In Spanish she added that
she hated Cancion and most of Mex-

ico. Tejano sounds came from books
and sweating puers. And Mark Allen
could not speak.  His father was
like a mambo king, and would always
yak about traveling to Mex Land as
if he was Kerouac in jeans.  Guy
sold onion soup to restaurants in

NYC.  So, one summer his kid went.
And he made friends.  Hot sun and
haciendas appealed to him.  And he
stayed longer than a summer.  One
eve he got killed as he lazed on
the shore of Yucatan.  Tito got up
enough energy to snake-hip Mark G.
 

---

 

LROVSE

by Desmond Swords

 

Underneath it all

We talk

Over and above what is

So why not stay a while

And let me dream

Of life with you.

I will not make a hollow pledge

Of empty words

Which promise something

I can’t give

The wind

The sea

Or starlight’s shimmer

On your hair

The bond I undertake to seek

Exchanges comforts

Found from understanding

And being understood

although

when I gaze upon your form

I see emotion as a mirage

You, the one love

Who will never truly stand before me.

Your flesh can be only touched

in dreams

When reality comes alive

In epic tales, played out nightly

Or in that half snooze state

I sometimes get to fool around in

A world where my desire for you can be indulged

 

---

 

 

INDYMETER

by Desmond Swords

 

What becomes of love when roses fade and birds migrate

beyond the realm of meaning,

subverted, staid and losing faith in the pleasure

of abandoning reason?

 

And what reason,

whereby all sober thought is discarded in lusts flame

to serve beside raw passion

beats now within?

 

That order is swept away along with all censure

of rash or ill judged action

in hot days of flush youth when belief has words that say

the day is of small matter.

 

And what matter,

creating still days when time is abundant unable

to cease or stray from our life

traps now within?

 

The initial register of their quivering timbre

becomes a significant hush

as each immeasurable moment sequentially

steals forward all dawn through dusk.

 

And the dusk,

like a rainbow ring arching into a cloud

startles colour to the eye,

does dance my

imagination chaotic, by upending sound

reason and trying

with constant attempt to straddle some powerful force

all shades of passion embrace

 

And this embrace,

like youth’s fading light draws softly in darkness

quenching ardour by decay,

relates to force.

 

The Heraclitan stream upon whose surface all thought

fixes logic and symbol

our world of flux creates, and which I seek to harness

events of this temporal

manifestation of unknowable order to,

as though it were dolmen stone.

 

But this stone,

riven deep into a wet rich clay of live cold earth

impervious to us all

holds no thought,

only the imprint all sequential moments that drew

each to the next have made known

before passing to fade like the rose and migratory bird.  

   

---

 

Untitled # 9 Liverpool London Paris

by Andrew Taylor

 

Aigle and addiction to nature

boulevards Place de Sartre – Beauvoir

Café de Flore after tipping

the cloakroom attendant

 

Le Bateau Lavoir a balcony view

there is a fountain in the Sqaure

Tim Hotel Metro Abbesses

cash points and The Two Windmills

Moulins in neon

 

The magnificence of friendships

that stand the test of time

 

You were there whenever I turned

around I felt your presence surround me

in the galleries of Paris

 

 

---

 

 

the flight was a little turbulant

by Andrew Taylor

 

but fine transatlantic phone calls

and time delays this world is shrinking

 

and all the time I think of Raymond

Carver and the three little words

 

that appear like shadows on the page

and haunt like evenings spent

 

away from home or in close proximity

to the beloved

 

the recognition of the other of being

fortunate the combination of it all

 

this imprint as if on fabric stands

out like the dusting of Spring in hedgerows

 

 

---

 

"Lingering"

by Sarah White

 

When I wake up

in the morning

I can smell him

on my skin      

and if I keep my eyes closed

I imagine

I can almost believe

he’s still beside me

in our bed

and not wherever the world takes him

on Friday mornings.

 

When I wake up

in the morning

there is emptiness

where he was

more than any normal morning

when I wake alone

wishing just once

I could roll over

and find him there

but his world always takes him

away from me.

 

---

Afterword

 

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

An archive of previous editions of Caught in The Net is available at

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

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

 

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

Next regular edition due at the end of November 2004 - look out for it in the in-tray

 

 

BACK