Big Issue! Would anybody like an issue today?
Music, theatre, sport, news and many other features too.
Would anyone like a Big Issue? Don’t be shy, come buy folks.
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Would anyone like a
Big Issues in society today, where we can go home and say
that it’s okay for someone to be on the street in the cold,
hoping you’ll stop and pay for a magazine he can’t even read,
because he’s “working not begging” even though he’s grey and old,
Did you ever stop and count the issues he sold?
Not half as many as the rubbish we’re sold by the press,
by men in suits trading souls for gold.
Would anyone like a big issue in their life?
Would anyone like to think about their wife
working on the street in his situation,
sleeping on a bench in an underground station.
Where the only thing done about her plight,
was to write about it, to write about
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Hard to see amongst the music, theatre, sport, news and
many other facial features staring gauntly out of the grey pages,
speckled black with meaningless words
promising hope and a future, and the first year’s credit absolutely free,
and the answers to your prayers with cosmetic surgery that will make you look fine,
So you can use your pile of gold that you got after remortgaging your soul on a falling market
to buy some time to lie down
before the bell chimes, telling you “your time is up number 32,
Please come in now, this is the end of your trip, have a nice day,
don’t forget to visit our gift shop on your way out,
don’t forget to pay,
don’t be shy, come buy folks,
Don’t be shy, come buy failure written down,
turned around and sold by someone who missed you whilst you were away,
wrote a big issue about you,
cried into a shirt-sleeve about you,
about the time you ran away,
about the time you didn’t say why my time had come,
about the time I stood in the rain,
About time to go- just leave,
amd in the long caresses of the night-time weave a web of dreams
for all the people in the world to walk upon,
still soft, though relics of a time long gone,
Tread oft the halls of solitude but fear not the dark,
as you wear nothing but sway stark naked into the distance,
He shall be your ark and watch over you,
and spread flowers beneath your feet,
and wash your hair with spring water,
whilst his daughters waft perfumed sweetness into the air,
and the heady scent strokes your mind to rest,
with a pillow of silk and a bed of tissue.
Dream on, and dream not of your big issues.

by Tristan Withers

Low Shoulders

Glowing like fake pearls
In her skin my eyes
Aren’t enough. She is awake
As silver rustles. But
Cautious in the cold I
Have been always clumsy.
I rip chintz and mugs
Split. I will not crack her.
We will both sigh, but she
Will be whole and open
For pilgrims who have tidy hair.

By MAFC

Futures

The trick of the light
Shrinking into form;
Billowing out to women
Picking their apples,
Now ingrowing, finding
The reserve of the summit.
My bedsheets dance when
I am out the room
Reading books,
Always aware the reverse
Is true.
I lost my courage from hunting -
A spear replaced my spine;
The irony in being found.

Perpetual Motion

Why do I rotate and spin,
Whirling whipping up
the cavernous concrete sky.
I would
Maybe like to come down
but I’m afraid I will burn out
Dissipate into the ether,
Sand in a whirlwind,
Consuming as I am
consumed
Without boundaries
As I flounder.
Why do I not cling on
To some tangible
Border
Some steadfast rock
Like a human
Instead of paddling in
the deep end,
staring at the shore
wading like a bird.

Dry

One straight line weaving down
like a subway folding at the end
as an envelope does.
There is no construction that tries to change
its function,
the created stays unmalleable,
my face remains the same.
Yet in my crippled vision
of how the axes try to
circumnavigate the
men
with only one virtue,
I find I am a battered scrap
of uncultivated soil, covered in clay
Like stone
like steel
like you can’t break the windows here.
Bring about this distancing,
my self propelled aspirations.
I want the line to wander
on
And kill this sole transmission.
No use has come
from being clay -
I’m dried out
and no one knocks
like when my knees
Become water for fools.
The sight of the pretence
touches down cleanly on the rough land.
I am all solace and
grudges
that burn when
I breathe.

Aspirations

My one line of vision,
Carved like none
of the land,
is fighting
soil on soil
for a chance to be
unsettled.
If I were just
a bluebird’s perch
sturdy and covered
with scratches like a smile
like a heart that scorches
the arms of my clothes,
then I would be a
beauty queen
and all my teeth would tear.

Sorcery

We built extravagance
With agile hands
And straight laced affinity
For practising eligibility
To dismantle witches
And their vile bleeding
Over our necks where
The dust should settle
And the cream curdles firmly
Because we choose
To wreck eyes
naïve eyes
Jagged eyes
That can’t sleep.

by Sophie Peacock

Award winning poet Mario Petrucci on Science and Poetry:

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Birth of a Naturalist –Shani Cadwallender

‘Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; I’ll dig with it’
- Seamus Heaney

That window and the dark getting in
And hiding the dust in corners
And my face there on the glass like a
Fainting spell or when
The room spins with spirits.
And outside the lamplight reflection
Of inside, like tracing paper
Held up to sky, the shape of leaves behind,
The picture changes in the frame, no clean
Lines, no flat, neat world but the rustling of
Thickets and the slime
Of gross-bellied frogs and the mud
Alive with earthworms

I think I’ll run into October
Meet the chill air with clogged lungs
Pull up grass in green-stained fistfuls
Not look back at this lit window
Scratch at soil with blunted fingers
Leave the clocks and hairdryers,
The dustbins and the telephones,
And harrowing the wordless ground
Will silence all their hollow sound.

A pen is lighter than a spade
But my words dig me graves.

For why else would we weep but keep
The salt sea locked away?
An empty hand,
A barren strand,
Where no sandcastles play.

For castles
Are too dry a dream,
So dream we not at all;
And sit is all we do, and wait,
For running, we might fall.

No sea, see we,
But salt and sand,
Stretching, stretching,
Far
And
Bland,
Our blanket to eternity.

by Alashiya Gourdes

I can measure it between
Thumb and forefinger
And yet
That is where I linger.

I crawled in
Not to fall.
A place
To be safe.

And small.

For I have two fine feet,
But am standing
Upon none.
My head is not of brick,
But nor is my conscience clean;
I,
I am the space
In between.

by Alashiya Gourdes

by Alashiya Gourdes

Begging for it to end, knowing
It was only just beginning.

You told me to be true, to be
As true as any theory could predict.

A feeling that bled
Through the pages and tore

Into the nights. I opened my mouth
For the exact moment

And still only blowflies came out
While you peered at me

From the corner of the page,
Retching away syllables like a child.

Disgusted, I turned away and made
Several vows and broke several vows.

And still there was no beauty in
Blowflies nor comfort while on

My knees. The moon was already waning
And your plea had already been effaced.

by Matthew Child

by Matthew Child