I decided to start linking to the works of other poets and artists and today I’m starting with Colin Dardis. Colin is a member of Voica Versa a performance poetry group, organizer of Purely Poetry and editor of Four x Four. Here’s the link to his website;
http://lowlightsforlowlifes.weebly.com/published-work-and-links.html
Arctic ice melted/ We watched through fish eyed lens/ Obscured to the truth/ Hugg’d machineries of doom/ strangled slowly by coal stacked umbilical/ nature pregnant woes/ Still born in the womb/ Surgeons walked away another miscarriage/ We acted too late.
Very interesting discussion on feminism, poetry and suicide.
Issue 11 of A New Ulster is open for submissions online copies will be available to read from the 4th of August. Closing date for submissions is the 28th. Here’s how to contact the ezine https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/contact-us-1
I have a book of poetry with a small publishers it will be abut a year before it is released. In the meantime here’s a link to the preview copy for those who want to take a look. It isn’t finished yet but it will give a good idea of the finished product. http://www.scribd.com/doc/155479614/Lord-of-the-Hill
The Willow Child
Stick-thin, blond-haired the freckled waif
Dusty, wasteland grey, soot baked streets,
Terracotta walls: rusty metal bars held us together.
Every breath a struggle for urban life.
Crippled the frail form, clothes and skin
Gripped gaunt his frame, lips stained blue
Life dished out in compartments:
Inhale this, swallow these.
Pills’ magic medicine kept life contained.
A half-corpse child played in sheltered doorway.
Street people pitied the child brought
Conkers, bottles of barley water.
Spent days in hospital, attendance
Freedom in Woodvale Park whilst
Siblings captured grasshoppers.
Sat on the swings, one sock pulled up.
Bangor Poems
Days out
I remember summer day trips to Bangor with my family
From Bombed out red brick and mortar Belfast to
Sunbleached Bangor streets I felt like Kojac
with my lolly staring down the
sloping streets towards the water.
Mossvale Street consigned to history,
Lingers only in memories.
I feared the gap between train and station
Enjoyed the smells of diesel and locomotive noises.
Icecream, KFC and dad strong and wise
We buried worries in the sand and watched the tide lapping
At our toes as evening fell we made the journey home
Clicking and clacking we slumbered days gone by.
II
Woodworm devoured our piano and my fishing rods
Uncaring of the sympathetic magic, the memories attached.
Grandfather’s hand me downs real wooden poles and spools
An old tackle box full of lures.
Father took us to Bangor where we tried to catch our supper,
Baited the hooks and cast the lines.
We had become fishers of men. Carefree days.
Hired a rowing boat and went to sea.
Cast our lines, caught a fish, I couldn’t
Kill it, my father dealt one blow, brought it home.
Dinner I couldn’t eat, none was left to waste.
The next time we lost a rod something dragged it to see.
Poseidon’s wrath claimed it, nearly took my brother,
Allowed to rot, the home consumed, never to cast again.
Pickie Pool
Humanity changes the world around it causing constant flux
Tearing down rain forests and childhood memories without a care-
– until it is too late.
Our childhood was walks along the tow-path, days out in Bangor,
Burying sisters in the sand and running in the water-
– Only a concrete marina remains.
I walk those memories and find the door ajar reality
Clashes with the past, here is a carpark sign-
– There had lurked a sea monster.
Curious children poked a desiccated husk, mermaid, we thought someone’s killed a mermaid,
Dad ran his eye over the bloated mass a basking shark-
– Chopped up by something.
Waded through the picky pool watched ships hug the coastline,
On a clear day you could see for miles-
– We didn’t care lost in our own world.
Paddled in the water and counted the barnacles, ate dulse and icecream.
Mother worked on her tan-
– Dad flew a kite.
There is some very impressive work in this issue and we have material from Kelly Creighton, Neil Ellman, Chris Murray and many more. If you enjoy poetry drop on by and check it out.
My latest poem.
My voice is still at odds
with my surroundings.
From countryside to
urban correlations.
To America and home.
Home a place which
Holds our physicality
Shackles for the soul.
Stranger’s around us
accents treacle thick
I swim through language
a drowning man.
Night cool; a time for
reflection and regret.
In the dark places of the mind I hear you there,
Along the twisted paths of memory,
Forced to relive the moments that brought us here.
Your whispers echo along with my guilt a burden of childhood’s bitter pill.
The first curse a boy fifteen to sixteen summers, the streets paved with ice,
Roads treacherous, playground became an ice rink, bags toppled first years.
You ran for the lights, I was two feet away you slipped and went under the wheels of a bus.
Only a school assembly marked your passing and life returned to normal,
Not for I… You haunted me accused me of not saving you.
The moment Glacial, frozen I repeat it over and over,
The outcome still the same.
The second curse a childhood trauma dismissed as the delusions of a phantasm,
An overactive mind, there are places I no longer wander for fear of reflection;
I am scared of what lurks in darkened corners..
Rough hands dragged a young boy from the playground….
I wake at night the shades watching me
As guilt gnaws at me with sharpened teeth
Seeking the marrow of my soul
I’d cry myself to sleep but the tears sting too much.
The third curse a bloodied breeze block dropped in a ruined, blasted landscape,
Here a boy his colours the same as my own had been beaten close to death,
His life circled the drain somehow the spark lingered….coma.
I used to walk home that way it could have been me.
The fourth curse an axe wielded by hate chopped at your husband left him
for dead protestant and catholic stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity.
We guarded your front door while you waited for word,
life or death we were there for you, you who sought an end to violence.
The fifth curse was a horrible fate you had such vitality my aunt,
cared for me when we were homeless, survived the shankill bomb.
Cancer caught you, you faded away, operations and chemo all took their toll.
Faith healers claimed to heal you I took your children out,
you passed while we where gone.
The sixth curse was five years ago an old friend we were in hospital the same time,
You gaunt skeletal I watched as you wasted away your immune system destroyed,
your family never seemed to visit I listened as you drowned and thought of Madonna
Sixth form prefect duties and resits.
These haunt me still from moment to moment I find their cries upon the wind.
Time is cruel and plays tricks, my mind momentarily steps into the past.
I relive the choices, find myself powerless before them.
These are my silent whispers doomed to walk with me forever more.
By Amos Greig
A New Ulster 