Apologies

Just wanted to excuse the gap in submissions, to make up for it i'll post two this month and get things back on track. Please continue to send your work, I really do enjoy reading them all!

Robert.

I WALK WHERE MEMORIES WALK

I walk where memories walk

I trace their steps

Breathe their air

And before my very eyes performs

The life I once called mine.

Before the edges were worn away,

The fringes tattered,

The hopes and dreams not yet conceived

So could not die

And all was hope and longing:

Was this me? Where did we go?

Have all left home so soon?

Scattered to the heavens by the

Centrifugal force called life

That honors no adhesion?

The chill of drafts drops my gaze

Away from all that was hidden:

A cursory glance,

A dismissive shiver,

A quick step onward in life.

I leave the memories there to walk

Alone, no steps retraced;

The air is still,

The eyes are closed to all performances:

The life I now call mine.

Bio:

Rev. Judith Mensch served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. She began writing poetry in the last years of her life, as a way of responding to and coping with breast cancer. She passed away in 2003.

Exposed

Natural three

in those days spent,

red lights.

It's not too late to cross them off your list.

I saw it in your pocket.

I saw you place it there

under supervision

in wed-locked circumstance,

across the stoney floor

we fall.

Through smoke and dim lit forests

we grow and tackle to the ground,

until

our bodies, clothes

are smeared in blood and grit.

To be the act of violence

and dance with its ideas.

By Robert William Atherton

Poetry in the Mens Room

Graffiti that caught my attention in the toilets of a bar in Liverpool.

THE BE-GOOD-NEWS CARNIVAL DREAM

Here come officiators

on all-terrain bikes

semaphore animal companion hands.

The herd ogle ambient shadows

under an automated teller machine.

Dancing juveniles in hoop-skirts

stagger as flutes choke.

The Attitude Queen gawps

at the tar-black tongue

of a hanged bail bandit.

by Chris Barnes.

In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16Th August 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

I also have a BBC web-page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml

Reoccurring Dream (Including The Soundtrack)

It starts the way it ends-

someone yells Hallelujah

and the hooligans put away their

brass knuckles and firearms then

sing lullabies to coax the wings out.

Pin the tail on the donkey is replaced

with games of ball and jacks.

The bungo juice is passed around one

final time and then the soberest one

in the bunch stumbles up to read out

aloud the note scotch-taped to the pearly

gates, you know, the one that says;

Picking-up some Chinese takeaway,

Be Back In A Jiffy!

Biography

After almost a decade of working as a freelance photographer in Europe,

Maurice Oliver returned to America in 1990. Then, in 1995, he made a

life-long dream reality by traveling around the world for eight months. But

instead of taking pictures, he recorded the experience in a journal which

eventually became poems. And so began his desire to be a poet. His

poetry has appeared in numerous national and international publications

and literary websites including Potomac Journal, Pebble Lake Review,

Frigg Magazine, Dandelion Magazine, (Canada), Stride Magazine (UK),

Cha Asian Literary Journal, (Hong Kong), Kritya (India), Blueprint Review,

(Germany) and Arabesques Review (Algeria). His forth chapbook was One

Remedy Is Travel (Origami Condom, 2007). He edits the literary ezine

Eye Socket Journal at: http://eyesocketjournal.blogspot.com . He lives

in Portland, OR, where he works as a private tutor.

Our second poet on the blog!

Beat Until Smooth

I am in the middle of discussing my recipe

for caramel nut brownies with Janet,

the woman seated next to me on the flight home

when there is a loud popping noise

and the plane starts losing altitude fast.

I can hardly breathe.

I can hardly believe this is happening.

This plane is really going down;

we’re really going to die.

It occurs to me that

when I hugged my wife

goodbye at the airport,

I only kissed her on the cheek,

and not on the lips like I should have.

It also occurs to me

that an airliner’s rapid descent from the sky

goes by way too fast for anyone

to be able to get their prayers organized

in any sort of way that would make sense to God.

So listen, I say to Janet,

we really don’t have a lot of time,

but, as I was saying, you only want to use

the black walnuts from Diamond for this recipe

because the other kinds of walnuts

always seem to come out tasting weird

when you take them out of the oven!

Bio:

A past member of five national poetry slam teams (Worcester, Mass. (x2), Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Del. and Albuquerque, N.M.), Rich has published four chapbooks of poetry and for seven years hosted an open reading and slam in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in March of 2008, Rich has been performing and writing steadily in the Duke City, and is a regular contributor/editor at localpoetsguild.wordpress.com. He is also an educator, adventurer and desert compound prophet. Rich’s poems have appeared in Adobe Walls: An Anthology of New Mexico Poetry, Fickle Muses, The Rag, Menagerie, Clutching at Straws, Shot Glass Journal, Mutant Root, The Mas Tequila Review, and The Legendary.