Computer Love – Maximus Kromholc

With selfies immaculate

I’m Maximus Kromholc, 19 years of age and currently studying film at Queen Mary University of London, I am however originally from Bedford. I wrote poetry as often as I can and me and my co-workers have even set up a poetry group chat where each week someone sends in a theme and we have to respond within the week with our poem. I read as often as possible with my favourite writer being Haruki Murakami and my favourite poet being Walt Whitman. I tend to write poetry about the modern world for the most part, enjoying fleshing out the complexities and surrealism that is imbedded into our current world. The following poem is inspired by a dream and follows a narrator that has found a deep love and obsession with a girl through social media. It is an evocation of a modern love poem and how we perceive modern romance in the age of the internet. It also explores the current distortion found within the youth of today between lust and love especially as influencers and such become integral parts of society but also with an undertone of overt and demanding masculinity. This poem tackles these themes as well as many others. Thank you for taking your time to read it and I hope you enjoy.

Computer Love.

Self inflicting pain,

With access to you,

The unobtainable.

Only in in anonymity,

With impure posted pictures,

Can i ever see that incomparable beauty.

Yet still the desire,

Incessant as true love

Fuels the loneliness forever.

–

You look so heavenly,

With selfies immaculate,

Teasing,

Touching,

Torturing,

My innermost lust.

Though in person, you I’ve never seen,

Just as real to me as a dream,

I already love you too much.

–

Beauty never comes so true,

Lips parted inviting,

Fringe cut cutely,

Black blonde hair intwined,

body carved of an angel,

Deepest hazel eyes,

Looking straight into my soul,

bringing anguish to my heart,

and tears to my eyes.

All for a chance with you,

Just a couple moments bliss,

I would do most anything.

–

You’re as strange as i too,

This I can tell,

You play the saxophone,

So wonderfully so,

I could swear it’s charlie parker.

Yet this fact I can only guess,

As you seem to bless

All else with your magic touch.

With the pop culture you post,

I see your tastes align with mine,

To an eerily perfect degree.

–

One of these days I shall meet you,

I shall touch you,

I shall hold your sweet hand.

Free from ambigious lust

And free from everlasting wanting,

With unattainable delights,

Jealousy constantly abound,

At the thought of any other,

Anyone it may be,

gazing upon my fantasy in the flesh,

That can hold you tight,

That can look into your sweet eyes,

That can admire your perfect nude body,

If only for the night,

or any eternal second at all.

I know this could never be me,

And that thought destroys me more each day.

By Maximus Kromholc.

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Writing on the Edge of the Kitchen Table – Amy B. Moreno

Migrated do-to lists with chastened ‘shoulds’

Amy B. Moreno currently lives in Edinburgh with her young family. An experienced translator and interpreter, she’s now trying her hand at writing her own words rather than someone else’s. She enjoys wild swimming, and cosying up with a good book (preferably in that order).

Writing on the Edge of the Kitchen Table
Amy B. Moreno

Someone once told me that mothers
Of young children (the Keepers of Others),
Write on the edges of kitchen tables
And kept occupied, but otherwise able
I push an empty-tanked car to the next frontier.
During this period of enjambment in my career
I mill out daily product reviews,
Shuffling priorities for minimal revenue,
Rejected notes from the country of motherhood,
Migrated do-to lists with chastened ‘shoulds’.
And a laptop moored in play-dough and crumbs,
Or tapping out plot memos with bedtime thumbs,
Guilty translations and proof reading,
At the margins of “Mummy, play more” pleading,
On receipts; a balanced assonance scribble,
Blotted by demanding baby dribble,
On the borders of highchairs and nappy changes,
‘Peace and quiet’ workplace strangers,
No room of my own with territorial workmates,
Sharing my bed, annexing my headspace,
I can make room on the desk still covered in laundry,
Finding space in my mind; a more challenging quandary.

Amy B. Moreno

Unguided – Ian Huckson

I am waiting with the damp-feathered birds

Ian has had poems published in magazines – ‘The Dawntreader’, ‘Sarasvati’, ‘Poetry Space’.
A gardener, living in Cumbria, now semi-retired he has of late, at last, found time to write more poetry and is keen and excited to contribute to this purposeful Voices project.

Unguided

Another bout of soft September showers merge under
a cloud-roof smudge, sky and earth seamed together
at the (only) near horizon, I can’t see any further.

The summer annealed fells now concealed beyond
these sheep-stripped fields, the splashing stream
and the yellowing leaves of mist-dripping ash trees.

I am waiting with the damp-feathered birds
(the moulting old, the young) through autumn days
when the intrepid go unguided, and the courageous stay.

Today, more than ever, I’m unsure if I am to stay again
or am I yet to prepare to leave, when will I know more
of what life still requires of me? I can’t see any further.

Ian Huckson

Yesterday’s Donuts – Sasha Newbury

a town where empty souls roam the streets

My name is Sasha, I’m a 25 y/o Copywriter living in London. By day I work in Advertising by night (and usually lunchtimes too) I find myself lamenting through poetry. It keeps me sane. It keeps me happy.

Yesterday’s Donuts.

So far south

it feels like the end of the world,

discarded ideals and beer-battered aspirations

litter the shore line.

Yesterday’s donuts sunbathe with

tomorrow’s comedown – still warm and wet from penetration

and washed away with Glen’s

–

so far east

the sun barely reaches.

A town filled with aged people

haunted by ever-present problems

that linger at every shop door.

You shall not pass

without the guilt of privilege

weighing – gently ebbing

–

so far detached,

this isn’t home anymore.

Not even the ghost of puberty past

or rosy mist of reminiscence

can fool me now

–

-but I’m tethered anyway,

–

to a town where yesterday’s newspaper

gets printed with regret

and fingered with greasy intent –

where the self-perpetuating cycle starts at 15

with a broken condom

on a dusty sofa

at a shit party

with your brother’s friend Dean –

a town where empty souls roam the streets

at the ripe age of 23.

–

They’re starved of purpose –

and dehydrated by the sea

Sasha Newbury

Salty Tea – Jessica Levett

I make friends with the dolphins and the leggy octopus

Salty Tea

I am a monster,

I have eyes but I don’t see what you see,

I see things from beneath the sea,

Drowning bodies and shipwrecked tea.

–

I live my life,

Jumping from crate to crate,

But as the waves push back I’m merely jumping in the same space.

–

With nobody around me,

I’m the only one of my race.

–

I make friends with the dolphins and the leggy octopus.

But I couldn’t swim nor hide as well as they could.

–

I have two arms and two legs,

With some sort of a body and face.

When I look down at the water,

All I see is a trace.

–

So empty,

So plain,

The artist gave up again.

I don’t even know my real name.

–

You see I’m lonely out at sea,

but at least I have my saltwater tea.

By Jessica Levett

Age: 18

Two Photographs – Sue Byrne

The photos surfaced today

Sue became interested in writing poetry in 2016, after her husband died of cancer. She joined the local Maggie’s creative writing group. In 2018 she became joint Writer in Residence and she has had some success with her poetry. She has had poems selected for “Our Beating Heart” (erbacce-press); an insect anthology (Emma Press); “Missing Pieces” (Maggies’anthology); “Write like a Girl” anthology (a project about 5 women writers in Nottingham).

She has joined several other writing groups and she has extended her knowledge of poetic forms. She enjoys sharing poems and writing with other like-minded people.

Two Photographs

Both taken by the other

on Sheringham beach one October.

I’m sitting on the sea-wall

overlooking a grey-blue scape.

You’re on a boulder

surrounded by the shingle-shore.

–

I’m wearing my pumpkin coloured jeans.

You’re wearing black. No change there then.

Behind me, wooden groynes gradually

disappear into the sea.

Behind you, a glimpse of infinity.

We share the sound of the waves.

–

Six years have gone by.

The photos surfaced today.

We were looking at different futures,

faces hiding the pain and fear

that was to come.

And we didn’t speak of it.

Susan Byrne, 14th October 2018

Amphibian – Laura Boyle

I’m an amphibian, cold-blooded; I just forget it sometimes.

I am a seventeen-year-old student, journalist, and aspiring poet. I use poetry to explore the full range of colours and sounds of the human experience; I delve into the topics that scare me most. I hope my poem finds a home in each reader.

Amphibian

Healing is a lake, and it’s a cold November day.

I feel the sand part beneath me as I stand on that border,

That static purgatory of liminality makes me shiver

Preemptively; I can’t dive in.

–

I feel the water steal the warmth of my brave toes;

Frightened, I recoil like a grasshopper, springing back onto solid ground.

The perpetual, vast wetness is the stillest whirlpool I’ve ever seen.

Still,

The anchorage of hope tugs me in,

Unwilling.

–
The torso is the worst part;

In feverish anticipation of the icy pain that begets the numbness,

I hesitate, searching for hands to pull me in.

The only hand that grabs back is my reflection.

–
The sky fills my ears and the clouds enter my lungs as I reteach myself how to

Breathe.

I’m an amphibian, cold-blooded; I just forget it sometimes.

–

I’m spinning upside-down in water or air,

Head hit by an asteroid, feet throbbing, disoriented.

Am I flying, or am I simply surrounded by the damp, frosty reflection Of the blotted sky?

–

I wish I could jump in the cerulean water head-first,

But for now, I’m taking tentative steps into the unknown,

Drowning until I believe I can swim.

Healing is a lake, and one day I will be the Loch Ness Monster.

Laura Boyle

The Mermaid and the Concrete Sea – LW Hawksby

I turned my fins to a few different jobs

I have recently become a 1st time published memoir author and started entering my poetry into competitions. I love writing about the outdoors including the sea. The reason I wrote this mermaid poem was because I still feel ” a fish out of water” in Big Glasgow.

The Mermaid & The Concrete Sea

I left the sea and shore far behind to head past the head-land to the place they call the city land.

Wispy, young and full of childish angst, I wrapped my fins up tight and stoted angrily off into a 90’s October night.

No one held my hand as I fell into a town so grand, it took my breath away and I wished for water and waves and sand so bad I almost didn’t stay.

But I did. Of course I did.

A fish out of water, the big metal monster below my feet scared me half to death so I stuck to the streets. Walking here and there and everywhere too fearful of even a bus leaving me somewhere.

I turned my fins to a few different jobs- a nightclub (oh a nightclub!), a restaurant and bar and still to this day have never learned nor needed to, drive a car.

As the tides came and went and the year’s span round the moon, I settled down but only a little. Just enough to appear normal. Just enough to find some breathing room.

My fins fell away and I grew hooves for feet. Hard, strong and road worthy I became a city-maid. Strong, wise and sturdy. Gone is the wispy mermaid of Mull’s delicate rockpool and here is a mother. Three young mer-men all doing well at gritty but fine Glasgow schools.

LW Hawksby

30,000 Steps – Connor O’Sullivan-Day

Boy you’re like a Rubik’s cube – Showing me all you colours and sides

My name is Connor O’Sullivan-Day. I am 22 years old and I love travelling, writing and a combination of city and nature, although I am a city boy at heart.

30,000 Steps

All of the hours fly by
It’s never felt so natural like this time. My night is in your hands –
I wanna get lost with you
Explore every single avenue.

–
We could get lost in Finsbury Park Stay here till the air gets dark.
Boy you’re like a Rubik’s cube – Showing me all you colours and sides, There’s nothing that I want to hide.

–
Found myself smiling at your name Wanna scream it from this train.
You walk me to my stop –
Please keep me out don’t let me go, Don’t make me end this night alone.

–
You quickly pause our conversation
To tell me about your dream in the middle of the station. And it feels like the stars were made just for us
We’re on our way to nowhere
But with you it feels like somewhere.

Connor O’Sullivan-Day

Chameleon – Sophie O’Neill

How similar we are to chameleons

My name is Sophie and im currently studying a performing arts degree which has expanded my passion to write poetry. I go by the basis that I write how I feel without guidelines and hope something resonates with the people reading it.

Chameleon

I used to think to myself on a saddened day

How similar we are to chameleons

How our minds work parallel to their traits

We mold our self into the world

A defense system when we feel at threat

Yet we convince our mind that’s our true self

When the real identity behind us

Is the one who doesn’t change its colors

When approached by the terror

We call society

–

I used to think to myself on a saddened day

Trapped in my mind parallel with society traits

Succumbed to sink into the chameleon way

When I pretend I’m not myself

It stops me feeling this way

Sophie O’Neill