| THE OLD ICE TRUCK You haven't lived if you're too young, To recall ice chips on your tongue. Delicious flavour, icy cold, Much better than the candies sold. We kids would follow the ice truck, With dreams of splintered ice to suck. The ice man stopped on every block, Same time so you could set your clock. He'd take his tongs to lift his wares, Then we would rush the truck in pairs. Grab all the ice chips we could get, "You Kids!" the ice man yelled in threat. We were not scared about his fuss, He always chipped some just for us. And sucking ice was such a joy, For every little girl and boy. It didn't cost a cent of douqh, What fun we had so long ago! -Dorothy B. Thompson ======================== Smoke-blue notes: By the mosque: an image - a woman under smoke-blue embroidery Blood of saffron selling street mirrored in suspended sausepans. The muezzin. Her eyes a veil. An unborn child kicks: markets buy gold, chicken necks, love? By the Taj Mahal at night: a fountain hides bones from a thousand worker's hands The building curves like a woman's body Breasts and hips fossil-coloured white, bright as diamonds against the smoke- blue night. Fight? By the sea: an image. A smoke-blue shark hanging hollow from a tree. Hammerhead long as homosapian legs, thick as lion's muscle middle move sudden smoke-blue strangeness Because you're not here: I unbraid my hair, search each entangled strand for the trace of blue threads from the blanket on your bed. I go out of my way to smell what you smell - exploring market crates of raspberries and mangos. Wrap my fingers around skins that connect me. I unpack my bamboo basket careful not to bruise the contents Do you eat avocados, oranges mangos or bananas? Are you arranging them in your wooden bowl - their skins smooth in the caved space? Because you're not here I think of you carrying fruit onto the porch - juices running into your curved hands Hands that held my hair while you kissed my skin wet from the shower I search my skin for your smell: examine fingers as bones incomplete without yours -- Astrid van der Pol ======================================= Losing Me tears come down like raindrops on a stormy night visions creep in and out of my head, disturbing the light fears cascade from mountain tops, rivers overflow I turned away from my sadness, yet I no longer glow Identity lost, my heart holding on to simple hope two worlds clash together, I cannot breath, barely cope take away this mystery, take away this strange pain trying so hard, even feeling some faith, yet I am still stuck out in the rain feeling a bit crazy, or even a bit happy does not seem right I remind myself about all the days, the nights, when I gave up that fight Yet I am still here, faking a smile, when all I got for her is hurt once again I force myself to believe, and once more I'm left in the dirt... - Gady ================================================= At the End of His Own Legend Unforgiven anything less, it is darkness Darkness I've become The darkness you least despise In my pomp naivety, wed a thousand times my gross extinction Becoming marvel among blue thinkers and green dancers too cool for peace An obtuse holly forest of creeping vines have bled from me So long for me to tell you, that It runs like sap from a pernicious pine (in my body of expat grey to toil) Nonentity anything less, this is confession In weakening skins I am the darkness incarnate Only remaining by day when it suits the ache of my profession - The love of my eye Some vengeance of my song! Under everything I am a servant (my body grey to toil) Fit to applaud, circumsize our humour obey fear- Love That Dress I am to serve the day, I am the darkness cheer I am, to rage among your dreams if ever you dream at all When you are stone, exhilarated - I am darkness I am servant I am dancing to a parlour rumour May your dreams seek resistance I say nothing, I say nothing again and again - Jason Douglas Smith ==================================================== BACKSTREET BUM WE MEET standing, straining our collective ears toward some rough-neighborhood understanding thru his crackedpavement phrasing ... how he'd got bashed twice by a trash truck and still survived, told in that hauntingly human-like language which orchestrated our ears raptly toward wanting to take on more as his going on about "home" in that vast jerryshack city of cardboard hovels sprawling beyond the railroad viaduct and his pridefully being called on often to perform coat-hanger abortions long after midnight challenges even more grisly than trying to control the screams of dope fiends ... we could see ourselves leaning noticeably closer to catch every detail of his drift, sensing how this mere derelict might well be the worldly-wisest one of us all PYRRHIC VICTORY the contest-without-winner begins: YOU vs. YOU Lock onto wrists forearms fingers whatever digit-impulse dictates grappling struggling (just what's got into you? this test supposed to be just a probe, but so in vain?) contorted back, joints creak pain Surprise and Disbelief show the strain "please stop! you've forgot that YOU are ME!" and begin to feel the greater agony because the spitting starts tendons twisted, strained bones snap like dead wood splinters when over-the-knee broken and though the skin still holds blood in there's the limp dangling and now to consider just how do you even start to make repairs (and finally for what?) – Jim DeWitt ============================================== Dispatches from ‘post-modern post-colonialist' poet Shane Neilson Careful Careful She said she loves me careful careful, so interminable My tiny window is open I stare at it waiting for you to come tap tap tap I look at the entrance pathway when crossing the main window I talk to the walls I sleep with your effigy please come I have little endurance left One day I could fly I touched a brittle balding ozone layer and glided through a stratosphere circling cumulus clouds and with a finger writing wrote in them 100% chance of rain today I, Icarus It seems a dialogue: you start, I finish or we bear arms, duelling for love's casualty. A few paces, a holster ambition, the slipshod aiming of an arrow designed for paralysis else errant, missing a target bordered by red or a face flushing so. It seems a haphazard occurrence: between the sight of gaze we're reduced to a form of crosshairs, splitting a victim into constituent quarter partitions and asking about a greater whole (it's hopeless). Love survives despite the worst cologne, it thrives in mistaken gardens and dies in fertile ground. Though a seed germinates, Though the goal's a sun, a moron senses that because my eyes hurt, I can't recognize a rising circle anymore, clouds can conspire but ultimately fail: when we reach out, is it blindly, with wings gummed and plummeting? ========================================================================= Have You...?? Have you ever seen a flower smile? They do, you know -- once in a while Or heard, perchance, dark clouds roar When down and down the rain doth pour? Wild nature I've both seen, and heard And pondered long upon its word Until, relating all to me Found -- I sooner would the flower be - James Seminal |
| Toronto | Ontario | Canada |
 theblotter@space.com |
||
|
. |
| Visitors: 01805 |