From Birmingham via the Isle of Wight, Mark Cassidy is an almost retired radiographer now living in Bury St Edmunds. He writes in the gaps between family, birdwatching, and Oxfam books. His poems have appeared in various European magazines and anthologies, and may also be found online athttp://markbcassidy.blogspot.co.uk
Lemoga
Get bendy with lemurs,
warm your belly in the sun,
look up from your downward dog
and see a lemur’s bum!
This is lemur yoga
Lemoga is fun
Lay your wrists across your knees,
meditate awhile,
ignore the piles of lemur poo,
these primates have style
This is lemur yoga
Lemoga makes you smile
Lemurs need publicity
to stop deforestation,
people hunting them for
food threatens their population
This is lemur yoga
Lemur education
Marvel at their stripy tails,
let them share your mat,
sit cross-legged and breathe with them,
support them on your back
This is lemur yoga
Protect their habitat
Heather Wastie is a poet and musician from the Black Country, living in Kidderminster, Worcestershire where she was Writer in Residence at the Museum of Carpet in 2013. She was Worcestershire Poet Laureate in 2015/16, and has published eight poetry collections. For more see wastiesspace.co.uk. On Twitter she is @heatherwastie
My dreamed hedgehog.
The new-Celtic elegy according to Mr. Paweł Markiewicz
I lost the cute hedgehog in last summer.
I can just only dream overnight - mourn.
The amaranthine body lay on grass.
Moreover, it was dark time of Blue Hours.
My life became unending lunar-dark.
Then moon shone palely without enchantment.
The Erlking at dawn, morn, dew and star cried.
Dark dazzlingly ovidian for his sake.
Without the hedgehog the time is so sad.
The bards singing the song of tender nights.
The hedgehog sits in a fair paradise,
dreaming of enchantment of butterflies.
The choir: >O, bewitch soft bat, the ontology of night.
The mourning dreamery lies, with the pearl sparks - cemetery.
Long live ghost of hedgehog, in spirit of the dreamy ghosts!<
The choir, I and animal are drunk of the musing wings,
shrouded in tenderness of hereafter-fogs, moonlit stars.
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems.
Too Hot to Handle?
Lea and Perrins were specific:
This should kick, just like a horse.
Far too much, though calorific,
so they shelved it, with remorse.
Ten years later, it’s terrific –
they’ve invented Worcester Sauce.
If your meal’s uninviting
do not file for divorce.
Don’t submit your plea in writing
don’t demand another course.
Make your diet more exciting
with a dash of Worcester Sauce.
Discontented with your ration?
Sometimes bland, and sometimes coarse?
You’re not dining in the fashion
that celebrities endorse.
Treat your palate with the passion
that you get from Worcester Sauce.
Would you like to be more scary?
Spell your message out with force?
Watch your enemies get wary
as you tap it out in morse?
Weaponise your Bloody Mary -
double down on Worcester Sauce.
Paul Francis is a retired teacher, living in Much Wenlock, who’s active in the West Midlands poetry scene and has won national prizes. During lockdown in 2020 he posted a sonnet a day on his website www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk. Recent publications include Rescue from the Dark and Poems for Ukraine.
Here he comes, again.
Our Graham.
With his big hands.
Big books.
Big words,
about buying Spoons in June,
about buying Forks in York,
about never gifting a knife, to your wife.
We will sit enraptured,
knowing he will never improve.
We ask why he isn’t published.
He says he is too far ahead of his time,
his words bending to his technique,
his stanzas, his line lengths are never uniform.
Still, it is only once a month,
and as bosses go,
he isn’t that bad.
Review of the Sky at Night
—
An uneven performance with some gripping parts:
Orion a definite success, just a pity the belt
is used only once; but then there is Hydra,
a random line of faint stars with no oomph at all.
The Milky Way really needs more volume,
we can’t all visit a desert for its full effect,
just dial it up a little for we city types,
and remove some astrology duds like Pisces.
The arrangement of Venus, Jupiter, Crescent Moon,
was a bit of a triumph, more conjunctions please,
and more often: waiting some twenty years
strains the patience of your audience. And brighter comets.
As for the Northern Lights – very fetching indeed,
but what a waste keeping them so far north
where hardly anyone lives. Try them in London,
say every few weeks, and vary the colours more.
Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh and has been known to attend readings with a robot. Her poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies, and her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021.
The responsive
awakening of springtide
The springtime wakes up
in may glory and dreams
in May-tender homeland
O! Dreamy moony spring
immortalize the enchantment
of the Naiad forever!
the pensiveness of a feather from crows
you are black such a muse-like falchion
thinker with many oboli
I listen to the obol that thinks in muses-paradise
the skepticism is blooming in me
…
the courage of violets
you are heavenly blue like cherub-like gem
poet with a handful of oboli
I see the obol that writes about muse-like spell
the eudemonia is budding in me
…
the delight of a birdie
you are gray such a mermaid sesame
dreamer with all sorts of obol
I smell the obol that dreams of embers of sempiternity
the Epicureanism is flourishing in me
…
the beatitude of a cat
you are golden like druidic land
philosopher with a little of oboli
I taste the obol that philosophizes about amaranthine ambrosia
the stoicism is flowering in me
…
Oboli – plural of obolus
Sombre Sombrero
If you want to look sad,
you can't wear a Sombrero
You have to be happy.
It will catch the rain,
be its own dance floor,
you will block up the street,
become a living door.
If you want to be a happy fellow,
buy yourself a Sombrero.
