Ink In The Veins

I view computers with a luddite scorn.
This generation doesn't know it's born.
The thrill of writing words down never fails me.
It is a cure all for whatever ails me.
A few sheets of blank paper and a pen
to start the day with and i'm fit again
to face the hazards of the world. Don't think
to transfuse me with blood, just give me ink
in an emergency; it pulls me through.
Black's best but at a pinch then blue will do.
My fountain pen connects to hand and brain,
fits in my bag, can't be used on a train.
It snugly feels just like a part of me
and ink flows from the very heart of me.

Dorothy Pope

The Nullabor

Emptiness drifted past the windows
as I watched in vain for kangaroos.
For mile on monotonous mile the train
travelling its arrow-straight track
was all that moved, ballooning
clouds of dust that settled anew
on grey-green scrub and merged
with the red desert sand.

Excited, we stopped at Cook,
sad settlement for fettlers,
where the weekly train brought supplies
and news of the outside world.
We looked at the women
looking at us, expressionless faces,
eyes lacklustre, deadened
by the lifeless landscape.

Back on the train, on the way
to somewhere, our spirits lifted.

Sylvia Goodman

Save Yer!

He leaned through the
Volvo estate's window,
camo strides, shaved head,
life story in cartoon tats
down his sketch book back,
with pit bull and family deaths
by numbered star.
Their lingo, steeped in bro and geezer,
stomped life a while
re-arranging government,
friends and women, at the merest
lash of their leather tongues.
Watching and surmising
I breathed radio talk
awaiting a small selling space
to jump in and leapfrog
today's gossip quicksand,
but the gangland chatter
irked on.
My invisible tattoo's itch
shifted to mental burn,
I grew impatient,
the in-car voices, I thought
inventing them mafia connections
and underground scenarios.
Eventually,
abrasion grooved
my tetchy shoulders
and quitting the phone-in
I strutted for London,
just as stranger A removed
dark green overalls from a haversack
pulled them up to his booming
char of a voice,
and walked criminally
to the driver's seat
in an ambulance.

Jerry Pike

Holiday

The sun is a bowl
holding heat on my skin
like love,
soaking into my bones,
into my mood
like balm.

My knots unravel,
my pressures melt away.

I am butter, oozing.
I am apple pie,
peeled and baked and brown.

I have brought all of me
on holiday,
my toes, my tears, my ears,
the whole package
so we can each unwind.

This is meditation,
my mind not chasing plans,
past and future folded away,
just the glorious, sun-filled
present.


©Jane Upchurch
www.janeupchurch.co.uk

Swimming In Time

A few months ago he was stuck in the Middle Ages
but as muscles toned and bunched,
and he learned co-ordinated breathing
and stopped feeling his lungs would burst,
he worked his way up to Henry VI
then the Reformation,
then Charles I.

Over the weeks he has improved,
forging half way into each new century
then swimming his way back towards its turn
before tackling the fresh open water of the next.
Today, wheezing and spluttering,
he made it into the nineteenth century,
1835 to be precise.
As he improves he hopes soon
to reach the Great Reform Act:
Waterloo would be a memorable victory
before plunging on to the Second World War.

The dates are of course a mnemonic device
and back at home each morning,
drinking tea and sucking mints,
he enters the figures into a spreadsheet
and runs regression lines
tracking progress.
1835 is his best performance so far,
full of grace as well as power:
eighteen lengths of the pool
in thirty five minutes,
just over half an hour.

Given the hold of this historical conceit
it was no surprise when a while ago
recovering from ‘flu
and really struggling to keep going
he half thought he heard Gregorian chanting
and dimly saw through his goggles
cowled figures at the side
disrobing to enter the water,
pale bodies covered in dirt and sores.

Peter Keeble