Heartlines

In the beginning, your worth was the weight of your muscle
Working the fields to be paid by the sack
On your narrow strip, picking beans alongside old Charlie, and Ollie
with her wide eyes squinting, and the rattle taggle children of the lanes
Soil ingrained into fingernails, skin like unpolished leather
Singing old songs to the dark furrows
Working for pennies and shillings and the grace of the sky

Under a beating sun and then came the copper, gold and silver
running through your human hands like liquid as you
uncovered Money, sticky like honey, faithless as a bee to its pollen
and you swallowed it whole, regurgitating your belief in profit margins
and growth rates as the fields were concreted over
Charlie and Ollie buried under brick and aluminium
Now everything in this city is for hire,
from women’s bodies to men’s bruised and blackened flesh
steeped in alcohol, weeping with waiting for
Commodities amenities convenience identities
Activities facilities obscenities and penalties
Fascination sublimation imitation inventories

Oh, the price of fish and the cost of things
Unbattered by the markets,
and the scales are falling
into their eyes.

Nowadays the beans are flown in from Kenya or Colombia
Where the raggle taggle children of the poor
are still singing old songs
to the dark furrows
working for pennies or shillings and the grace of the sky.
under a burning sun.

Eileen Neil

Away with the mental acrobatics
of Modernism – post or otherwise –
and all such elitist dross.
Clarity is what I crave, along with
the beauty of the singing line.

I do not read poetry to be puzzled:
give me wonder and imagination,
the sorcery of the senses, the gossamer
frailty of angel’s wings. Obscurity
kills enjoyment, makes magic meaningless.

I shall leave Pound, Bunting, Eliot, et al,
to the dry deliberations of fusty professors
and academic bores. I will savour instead
elegies to the demise of rare dragonflies,
odes to the blaze of distant galaxies.

Bill Fitzsimons

In the mind’s geography,
there are no maps to guide you,
no star to steer you home.
No one has been there
before you and there
are no signposts.
You are your own cartographer
in this uncharted terrain.
It is virgin territory –
do not despoil it.

Bill Fitzsimons

Libby’s a teacher, Beta grows herbs,
Liza’s a dreamer, while Elsa loves words,
Elisa’s a neat freak, Belle is a slattern,
Isabelle like chaos while Libby needs patterns,
Ealasidde writes poems, recites them on walks,
Beth’s passion is animals, she’d like her own horse,
Elspet is confident, Babette is a realist,
Bessy’s a worrier, and Ellie an idealist,
Bettina is slim and Betsy a fatty,
Lisbeth’s meticulous but Aliza is scatty.

So which of these many Elizabeths
exist? The answer is all of us
-but I call myself Liz.

Liz McPherson

This was written for National Poetry Writing Month 2021 (a poem every day for April). This challenge was Day 14; write a poem that delves into the meaning of your first or last name. Visit www.lizmcphersonwriter.com

Let those who are in favour with their stars
set out upon a journey round the moon;
cast aside restraint, break through the bars
of brittle caution. Life must end too soon
and choices disappear like Autumn mist.
So gird your fabled loins, you daring few
who face the Minotaur; who have been kissed
by courage lesser mortals never knew.

Good luck to them, I say, those heroes all,
but spare a thought for all us normal folk
who live and love and work – and often fall
between the cracks, bowed down by Time’s dark yoke.
Those of us whose stars will grant no favour
must taste the food of life…. without its flavour.

Bill Fitzsimons

guilty as charged –
kissing the gunner’s daughter
without priming her

the gunner’s daughter
matched me salvo for salvo
till our rounds were spent

combined fire-power
ensured this was more than just
a shot in the dark!

Bill Fitzsimons