Transitions

Call for submissions: The Cleave (Cleave Poetry Webzine)

In a post-millenial age what do poets have to offer a fragmented and searching Society?

Is the pendulum swinging from analysis and fragmentation to synthesis and fusion?

After analysis comes synthesis - and the creation of The Cleave poetic form.

There are signs that our age will become an age of co-operation, fusion and synergy.

Join us at the beginning of this exciting and radical poetic form that has the potential to embody these core values.

Submit your Cleave poems, no matter how faltering your steps are initially.

We can all learn together along the way.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Please explore, experiment and extend this form in your own personal way.
2. Articles and thoughts on Cleave poetry welcomed.
3. Submissions by email only.
4. Send your submissions to cleavepoetry (at) gmail (dot) com and include the words CLEAVE SUBMISSION in the subject line.
5. Please supply a short biographical note and web URL if you so desire.
6. Your submissions should be in the body of the mail, preferably with hyphens separating the 2 parts of the cleave poem, further formatting will be done.
7. You retain full copyright of your work - by submitting you grant us a non-exclusive right to reproduce your work.
8. Contributions in English please.
9. We do not pay for submissions.

my new poetry blog

I have moved my poetry blog to:
wake up, sleeper

I hope you enjoy it
PT

postcard art

I found some cheap blank postcards in our local store
so here is my first piece of postcard art
seems difficult to find quality paper postcards for drawing on
I will search

a lifetime is not enough

yet more rejections
so I'm putting this one here and on Duo
a love poem to my dearest wife, friend and soul-mate Magz

a lifetime is not enough

sleep steals hours and night slips in
through gaps in windows
pulling down the blinds

I can hear you breathe
and press promises onto my pillow with your lips
your hand is warm in mine
hidden from the stars beneath a sea of sheets

your hand twitches
as you fall from rest
to sleep and are lost
in the depths of dreams

I lie in the shadow of your grave
the sun barely breaks the horizon
its warmth does not bring back your warmth

the gravestones are cold
they always are
this time of day

there is never enough
time to spend with you

a lifetime was not enough
maybe eternity is

mushroom studies

I pondered on the merits of mushroom studies
I think they are so varied that they will probably be of great help in inking practice.

pen and ink sketches

I have been doing some sketching with pen only (no preliminary pencil sketch) - see penonly photo album also.
Some of the 'portraits' are '10 minute' sketches - trying to increase accuracy and working out which lines are the most important.

It has been fun and somewhat difficult but I feel it is worth it.

Yet another transition.

 

 

Rejections: a way of life?

I had a rejection from Smiths Knoll,
5 prose poems and 1 'cleave poem'.

Feedback: "interesting".
It was a very quick, sent it on 3.03.08 got it back 8.03.08, by one of the 2 editors J. Cutts.

Get up, move on.
PT

Poem: A Portrait Of Death As An Artist

(first published in Poetry News Winter issue 2008: CLICK HERE  )

Light peels back the night from faces
with prayers engraved on chiselled lips

the mist of souls is teased towards the sky
by the sun that lifts the veil to peep

at death upon the ground
already calling those bodies down

the bodies of boys buried neck deep
in metal tombs no longer draped in laughs.

The water-colours of yesterday have dried,
like oil, becoming water-fast

so time scrapes the scene and scrapes the scene
until all the flesh is gone and bones are stones

that mark the beds of boys that overnight
joined their forefathers in the grave.

The tombs crumble into remnants,
overrun by the forest’s creep.

Green crystals encrust copper
swords and helmets lie exposed.

Earth draws the greens back down,
reds and golds blur the setting sun.

Black night tumbles from the sky,
pierced by time’s perfect aim.

Prose poem: Rendezvous under a Saigon sunset

(first published in Flashquake Spring 2008 Vol 7 Issue 3)

I meet my husband under a nameless bridge in this brainwashed city. All identity is buried under the red of the sun.

Our memories return, hesitant and pregnant with guilt twitching under our skin like the tap tap of phantom sticks playing marching tunes. My skin is embossed with napalm scars, indelible maps, like our wounded land — healed but still wet underneath. Do you remember, the orange of the fires that burnt the ground, the naked trees that joined our hands waving at planes we called our friends?

You look, hot, my husband. Your shirt seems to sweat for you, was England that cold? Let me undo those cuffs that hold your wrists tightly crossed behind your back.

Do you remember how Mum used to simmer clear soup for hours then laid the carcasses beside the pho? Just bones drained of life, all the meat boiled off. Don't bring back the dead. Don't take me back to bed, where the names are still engraved. Leave them buried.

Heavy whispers sneak over pillows from lips to ears, refertilising the memories of our children slaughtered by the shrapnel of our broken promises.

He may be white inside, but he will always be yellow to me, no words can whitewash his skin.

Poem: Free to do as I want

(first published on Ink Sweat and Tears: 6 august 2007: CLICK HERE )
(Then published in the ACP News Spring 2008 [which has the copyright]).