The Why in Wind Street

It may as well always be Halloween

on Wind Street.  They can explain

everything about Swansea, but not

that vowel.  By sheer force of will

I can make the rain stop; my beret

is all that’s keeping me dry , only here

three months.

The underpass is like a train to

nowhere.  The cold tiling is cross-legged

for beggars.  It’s still

this place, with vomit in doorways,

the Cross Keys’ cross keys stolen

from the sign (even older

than the castle).  Dylan

chants his poetry on a scratched Gramophone.

- Leslie McMurtry

Once Upon A Time In New York

At Beekman Place we strolled

the brass and gnarled wisteria-

fantastic light of joy flung like a view

beyond the granite bluff and undertow

of any island’s poodled doggerel;

we clasped at love like ornate iron;

we soared like Deco balconies and knew

no fretwork—posh, luxuriant devotion,

more resplendent than the supplest

Bukhara.  Gilt-suffused. Impervious.

The doormen mincing recognition. 

Yet how penniless is longing.  Now

that you are rouged in memory,

how sere the plunge.

At nearby Sutton Place the Times

today lays bare a spraycan doodle

of neglect: this bedrock riverbank

is tunneled, runneled, grated,

catacombed as any cellblock

alibi and rusted to collapse.  But

who among us could have guessed

a third-rail spark might arc and sizzle

love to smoke, heart’s circuitry gone

haywire? Yet how friable are dreams

of constancy, how faux the light

of Sutton Place, whose woundings

are relentless, darling: tiskets,

taskets; all fall down.

At Beekman Place alone

to trace again the cobble hill

or hover at the Zephyr Grill,

whose windows watershed

my dead reflection like a carp

asphyxed in fragrant lilies,

sallow bottom-feeding widower

of restaurants where cranes

alight to sway in plumes

and all the candles

glow for two.

- Robin Metz

For LM

Language allows one to

radiate the knock-kneed seat of soul.

Transient moment to moment

I believe that I may vanish in grace.

Still, I forecast the seven deadlies

in the best of creators, or,

at times, I think only the

lucky can grasp the energy

to be Job - despising those

faint-hearted who must glance

over their shoulder to see if

God is the whirlwind of words.

                                        -      M G McCracken

“Hold Hard These Ancient Moments…. “

                     (Title is a paraphrase of the title of a poem by Dylan Thomas)                      

Now consider this ancient voice, the carpenter’s son naked

on His timber against the light’s high wall.

Consider the remarkable choice which we have …to hammer

down His nailed moments hard like notes

of a very singular bird into the freedom of a sky, (where else

but sky encloses a structure’s full dimensions).

There sentences cry, prophecies echo off every cloud, and

highways of birds crosshatch back through our bodies 

while the angelus bell of poetry calls us back to always, so

nothing is ever lost and time is always one.

Even with old Mr. Death up a piebald tree snickering, coo-cooing

our foolishness because he knows as he shakes his branches    

over our domain, allows a random quilt of blood red leaves

to litter over our ambitious backdrop and ground,

that he alone is the star in the film, his role, award winning

in his skull mask and breathless wardrobe.

And his script is true to the sky: a rich overture, first into chaos,

then completeness, then this sleep …finally our anodyne.

So let the sun end, it is always with us. Time is no end or beginning. 

Even with broken wings in splints we still would fly.

The Words once spoken, are ours to keep.

- Richard Pflum

Published in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Issue #5, Spring 2007

If You Only Knew

I picked up Dylan Thomas' ghost

drinking his weight in words;

at The White Horse Tavern

shot by short shot, I swallowed

my way into that dark night.

Tipsy, he spun exuberant tales

and begged to come home with me

as a portrait of the artist as a young dog…

I never could pass up a stray.

I lost him somewhere between

Alexie and Vonnegut, barking wits

treed my senses with smiles and satire,

so it goes, and so on. What is loss?

Dylan Thomas' ghost would not give up!

In Nick's English Hut, in Bloomington, Indiana

he resurfaced in same booth I sat in;

shot by long shot, I swallowed

his waggish humor wholeheartedly.

How could I turn him away? Didn't,

haven't. Now he wants a reward

for turning up unexpectedly.

He laughs at bats flying low

inside my house, cats gnashing

at wind through open screens,

me crawling across wooden floors,

as he tosses words in mid-air.

As a mutt of mixed make

he appears and challenges me

to fetch the spirits of birds

who with rage, rage

are chased into frantic flight.

He laps another beer,

and his shaggy spirit disappears.

Shot by excessive shot, I swallow

his every metamorphosis,

crazy as a howling omen.

It's my turn to say something:

a charm bracelet for cruising.

This poem, he says. Well, yes

and no. Oh, if you only knew….

                   - Lylanne Musselman

Rev. Eli Jenkins' Five & Country Senses

Poetry Contest Winners

The winning poems of The Rev. Eli Jenkins' Five & Country Senses competition, read by Caffeine Theatre Artistic Associates, with photos from the production of Under Milk Wood and art by Benjy Davies.