The Boay Rit Didane Learn Swedis or French – Shane Johnstone

A tear faws as reality claws

Shane Johnstone is a Glasgow writer and poet, writing in his Glaswegian dialect of Scots and Scottish Gaelic. His prose has been published in literary magazines such as ‘Lallans,’ ‘Pushing Out The Boat,’ ‘Product Magazine’ and ‘New Scottish Writing.’ His writing features a consistant theme of examining modern class attitudes. His first novel is awaiting publication.

The Boay Rit Didane Learn Swedis or French

Lit a mad bolt tae the heid it cam

Oan a shyter ae the arse end ae the blackest backshift

Pannelin throu competin eez selfish fancies

Rooteed in the middle ae re sel, atween establishit identitees

As e pictures facees ae progressive pals

Answerin wi guilt the hoodies caw fir “new”

–

E made it blue oan paper ae start agane

Pit it in ink n pattit eez ain back

Sat back n smirked at eez modernitie

That’s hou ae move forrit, e shoutit wi wide ees

Alloued the tendrils ae Swedish an its associates tae tak root ower eez shame

Wife lookin oan wi wise resigned cynical truth

–

Tell thum it’s modyrn, picture ri praise

Thu’ll ask ye ae displae wi gleams in ees

The just motivation fir noble intentions

Nae need fir that auldness, that’s juist politics

Why bother wi strife, fir somethin that’s deid?

That’s no reason, put attention oan days tae come

–

So e scrunchees eez ees, clenchees eez cheeks

Erms grittit wi tension, heid burstin wi lines

Eh scribbles in blue, wi a hunner pictures floatin

Aw the while bubblin, tae be stuffit tae the boattom

Thae auld voicees screams will be snufft, (only fir so long)

An each minit passin brings ri threat ae him wakin

–

Clatty howlin rattles ri ayr aroon

E luiks up fae eez papir, tilts ri heid, sighs

Hauls ri heavy shooders, ri droopin torso

Opens ri latch tae ri ruim ae panic

The wee heid harried wi thots ae abandonins

Wee rid ees searchin fir a big boady an a certain whiff

–

E sighs as e tips back warm milk, shhhhh

Guilt streamin throu tae the end ae the “h”

Sorry, ach sorry, ach sorry wee yin

A tear faws as reality claws

But nou’s no the tyme fir fancies an ifs

Yir heid doon, yir graft done, mak do

–

The auldness rears again, in a heid that’s too easy

Tae pummel intae the shapes ae others

Swedis n French wull huftae wayt

Lit rey did that last month an afore

Puir wee hing will need tae survive

Oan two native tongues that ye wir telt

Belong tae the past, though thir normalitie gropes ye

Thir evryday-ness shouts n bawls at ye,

Thir aw aroon-ness elephants ri ruims

An noo, post decision, e listens fir facees

As normal interactions, induce squirmin an twitchin

An e hinks, wan day, e’ll learn thae two othirs

But noo e hears wi a smile, screamin a rattlin

An looks forrit tae speakin intae calm slumber,

Eez puir, two tongued wean

Shane Johnstone

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Someone’s Changed the Flowers – Lizzie Smith

the stories you build of life

Lizzie Smith was born in Scotland. She went to Cambridge University to study literature and ended up working in Japan, Switzerland and England. She is currently a teacher and lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two children. She has had poems published in a number of anthologies including Hammond House, Binsted Arts Festival, Write Out Loud and Planet in Peril.

Someone’s Changed the Flowers

Someone’s changed the flowers

in front of the gilded mirror,

the reflection they make

looks orderly.

Someone’s changed the flowers,

perhaps it was a carer,

the orchids are trained

into shape.

Someone’s changed the flowers,

it’s a different picture now –

the stories you build of life

through the looking glass.

Someone’s changed the flowers:

to you the mirror on the wall shows

the same queen of the drawing room

holding court in her gown.

Someone’s changed the flowers,

like you changed the story of my role,

and my exits and entrances

into pantomime villain.

Lizzie Smith, Edinburgh

A Lone Mother’s Worries – Scarlett Wilson

A cradle of love made by her arms

A Lone Mother’s Worries

The baby cries in a crib made of wood

cotton blankets to soothe his cold body’s shake

hands flailing through the early morning’s light

and tears swimming on his rose tinted cheeks.

Through the door comes his mother,

her child’s name on her delicate face’s lips

and she will feed him with her body’s nutrients.

A cradle of love made by her arms

A hush in her tone to float him back to sleep

where he dreams of silk skies and golden clouds,

and she trails a light step through the room

leaving her son’s cries to echo through the air.

After the door flutters shut

One hand clasped into the other

She whispers to the sun

Knees red from repeated hope lost in the horizon

For the faith grows weary

The more she hears his cry

And the only thing that replies is the wind

Empty without promise.

Scarlett Wilson

Here For A Season – Jess Streeting

Your autumn came too swiftly

I am a community nurse and teacher and write for pleasure and for the nursing press.

I recently published a novel on Amazon, Last Summer in Soho, primarily to help raise the profile of school nursing. I have been asked to speak at many nursing conferences about my work, including most recently the International School Nursing Conference in Stockholm. I enjoy evoking the complexities of nursing, with affection and humour.

In my poetry and prose I explore themes of childhood, loss and trauma.

Here for a Season

There have been other autumn days,

A morning when I looked out over Oxford trees quietly dropping their fruit and leaves

Joyful and exhausted, holding our new son

And you brought me one of every kind of apple from the Tesco in Cowley Road,

Confusing the lady at the till and not caring, of course, about that.

Our boy had fallen, like a ripe, ruddy apple into our lives

Abruptly, appropriately, on the day expected.

Coming home to flowers, cards and whisky warmth to wrap our baby in, we

Retreated from the world and churches,

Keeping stillness in one room.

This autumn morning

–

Our grown babes sleep, exhausted.

Outside, some dry gold leaves from great old trees drift down past stone church walls.

You brought such love and music into our unusual lives

Borne proudly in like apple gifts for us to take or leave.

Colour that most people would not think to blend all in one jumper or sock.

Not caring about that at all, of course.

Your autumn came too swiftly then your winter.

And we all, dazed and heavy, with no music for this autumn day

Keep stillness in one room.

Jessica Streeting

21.10.2015

Books – Hannah Darnley

To escape my frustration and despair

My name is Hannah Darnley I am 27 years old. I live in Canterbury Kent. This my poem “Books” below.

Books

I read books to escape. I come alive in them. My heart pounds and I’m no longer there, I’m the story, it’s me. I am living these lives of pain and pleasure. I am sick when I stand after reading, still foggy from the world I’ve left. Nauseous for a long time. My limbs are buzzing and I’m tense. Reality and unreality are mixed. I like the blurred feeling between make believe and the real. It’s addictive and I never want to leave. I wish I were made of books, made of stories to live and re live. To be reborn again and again as in books. To escape my frustration and despair at the nothingness that is my life. My sadness leaves me, my life is not wasted, youth not disguarded but living breathing and vital. I am free as I wish to be, flying high above my fears and worries, all forgotten. They have done the hard work for me gone past the fear of freedom, skipped the hardest step. So I’ll keep reading and maybe one day I’ll slip into the pages unnoticed and live them for real.

Hannah Darnley, Kent

Fragile as Wicker – Laurence Morris

I want to get drunk on air

Laurence Morris is an Academic Librarian of Leeds Beckett University, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an active mountaineer. He has climbed peaks in the Andes, Arctic and Rockies, with his poetry focusing on the connection between people and landscape.

Fragile as wicker

There is a hole in the sky
where the willows used to be
fragile as wicker
holding back heaven
and less useful than a fence.

I want to get drunk on air
and laugh like water
feel leaf and stone like loving
and know that all which ever
lived and breathed is holy.

Laurence Morris, Leeds Beckett University

Voice note from a lover in summer – Luke Grey

When the city is nearly silent

It is a poem taken from a Whatsapp Voice note sent by a lover.

The author, Luke Grey, is a writer. He lives in London.

Voice note from a lover in summer

“One of the ways in which I love looking at clouds

Is to see them bisected by wires.

One of the most beautiful sights of the summer,

This late in the day, is when clouds take on

Their deeper tones.

Sometimes more intense, even, than the brightly lit sky.

When sat, or stood, or (now) walking on a platform

And looking up at the wires, the suspended wires:

Gliding towards each other,

Crossing, ending, held aloft, hitting a pole,

Marked out by the thinner wires than hold the thicker ones apart

And yet together.

That web of energy, stretching far across the city,

Only a few metres above me and the rail tracks,

Never meeting.

That web measures itself out between me and the sky,

And sometimes, sometimes, at the most exciting moments,

When the city is nearly silent,

And you stand on the platform and look up at the wires.

You can hear them fizzing.

Fizzing in a sky full of high, lunging, soft and smooth clouds

That sashay upwards and northwards.

Pink on their undersides, lit by the setting sun.

A dark lavender on their edges, and then above them

A pale, duck-egg blue.”

Luke Grey, London

Tomorrow – Bonnie Cheuk

What will it bring?

Bonnie is from London, UK. She writes poetry to complement her piano playing as a way of expressing unspoken thoughts and feelings. Her writing takes inspiration from personal experiences coupled with creative depiction of stories that derive from imagination. The fragility of life and the expanse of astronomy are themes she likes to include throughout her work.

A little bit about the poem – Tomorrow:
It was written as part of a three-part poem (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow) and is about looking forward to Tomorrow and what it will bring, whilst remembering and reminiscing a loved one who has gone to the skies.

TOMORROW [明天]

Tomorrow

What will it bring?

Will songbirds still sing?

Maybe a change in human nature

Discovery of a new creature

Let us write historical scripture

For tomorrow and our future

Can you still hear me talking?

In times of lonesome walking

I wish you were still here

To wipe away today’s tears

Yesterday was difficult

It brought me to a halt

A time capsule is what I need

To plant more memory seeds

I don’t want them to fade

Willing to put tomorrow up for trade

Just to see you once again.

Bonnie Cheuk

TXT SPK – Joyce Walker

Don’t b l8

Joyce is a retired administrator who has had poetry and stories published in a number of magazines. She won 1stprize in the Writers Brew story competition in 2002 and was runner up in the Erewash Writers Burst Flash fiction competition in 2013. Her most recent win was 1st prize in the Writers Forum Poetry competition in the July 2016 issue of Writers Forum. She loves the First World War Poets.

TXT SPK

I ave 2cu

It can’t w8

2 o’clock now

Don’t b l8

If ur

U’ll leave me cryn

4 I’ll think

Our luv is dyin

Joyce Walker

Romanticism – Aisha Bibi

I do regard the sky often, wishing upon a shooting star

My name is Aisha Bibi, I am a full time A level student, studying Sociology, Geography and religious studies. Am 17 years old and like to think that I have a lot of extraordinary life experiences.

Romantism

He has me caged in a sanctimonious romantism

By which a dwindled hope, became a beacon of light

By which I barefaced crave, to be the nostalgic character

Whom he voluptuously gazes at

But I know she couldn’t be me

For I am attainable, so not the one he’s looking for

And not the unattainable like his love, he so loves the unattainable

I do regard the sky often, wishing upon a shooting star

That thou he isn’t mine

Someday in my dream his voluptuous gaze, might free me from this cage

So together we can rescue the goldmine wrecked ship

In which he sails away, treasuring her

And I will treasure the voluptuous gaze

While regarding the sky

So, I can wish upon the next shooting star

–Aisha Bibi