Spite

I guess I have one of those
beatable faces, the sort you want
to blue with a bruise.

He began to not want me.
There was no other woman,
no drugs, no usual reason.
He just started to hate my face.
It’s an ordinary face, it smiled
upon our ordinary love.

I want to cry but it’s cold,
I think my tears would make
little icicles on my cheeks
so I stick my hands in the snow,
I fist the snow, let it numb me –

I’m not the masochist he thinks I am
but I like this pain, the fear
of frostbite, the way it makes me
clench my teeth together; I can’t
feel anything else.

The night he left me
there was no argument, I didn’t cry,
I tried to get it right
but he hated my smile,
my acceptance of his leaving.
He didn’t hit me, there was no pain.
He just spat & spat & spat.

Helen Kitson

Tattoo

He had love on his right hand,
hate on his left.

On her soft skin
his name was soon punched in.

It was Indian ink:
permanent and blurry

Kathleen Kenny

Ancient Evening Ode

And to dream of the shoulders
of men in blue moonlight
wrapped in sheets like the
copses of birch trees in shade

and to know of the angles
of stars and of streetlights
and of nighttimes of trains
and the singing they raise

this the widest of fields
in the widest of places,
this the amplest grass
that alone is unmowed

these the tenderest thoughts
under tent tops of pleasure
these the princes of love
in the shallows of groves

this compulsion of sound
of white poppies amorphous
with a chickadee chatter
and a red bud of spring

every sing song of bird flight
that chips at the window,
every unrhymed dog song
that is blackened unwinged.

Lisa Jarnot

A different map

This autumn we memorised
a different map, one that marked

the course of rivers. We learned to check
the phases of the moon, and calculate

the tides, second-guess the sweep of water
up the estuary, assess the land,

avoid the flood plains, then climb
to higher, drier ground, where a tree

could still be planted and drop its seeds.
We practised spotting toadstools

where they bloomed wet among the fallen
leaves, we fingered bracket fungus

clamped to the trunks of oak trees,
marvelled at the emerald moss, close-knit,

glowing in the grey light. And we caught,
in a glance, so many unlooked-for rainbows.

Only yesterday, we wandered home
through the misty afternoon, wiped water
from each other’s eyes, then stepped
into the garden. We raked up sodden leaves,

leaves of hazel, maple, pear and beech
and shaped them into blazing bonfires.

Angela Haward

Volcanoes, Banking, and Crime – the Big three…

Oh, Lor, planes across Europe are grounded! Because of the Icelandic Volcano…or more accurately, the ash from same, expelled forcefully into the atmosphere – perhaps, like the dinosaurs we’ll all die out, become extinct?

No doubt these clouds of volcanic ash will block the sun’s rays, cause temperatures to plummet. Soon the World Government EU will be appealing for us all to burn more fossil fuels to warm things up…

What a world we live in. The Banks perform like morons, lend money that can never be repaid, throwing good cash after bad – then, who can really honestly say why, we give ‘em shitloads of cash as the economy goes to hell in a handcart.

Well, it we didn’t bailout the banks, sez accepted wisdom, they would have collapsed. It would have been chaos. It would have undermined faith in our financial services sector.

Is that right?

Does that mean our banks have the “right” – like a God-given right – to act as if they were total fukwits? Not only that. But having lost shitloads of cash, the taxpayers underwrite those losses, and the tossers all slap ‘emselves on the back, and payout bonuses all round!!

Who are the real idiots, do you think?

Going back to poor old Iceland. They’ve recently released a report on the collapse of their three major banks. This has revealed a number of cases of “potential illegality and acts of ‘gross negligence’ within government preceded their demise”.

Ummm. The report alleges there “was possible share price manipulation and exaggeration of asset values within the Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki banks.” It also suggests that the three banks were controlled by five investors who had ‘unlimited influence’ and pressured the banks to make loans to their companies and friendly clients…”

Doesn’t seem possible, does it?

“Among those alleged to have received ‘excessive’ loans were property entrepreneur Robert Tchenguiz who received £1.4 billion, retail tycoon Jon Asgeir Joannesson and former chairman of Landsbanki Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson. The report said: ‘We consider that Kaupthing’s loans to Robert Tchenguiz and companies have been in excess of that which could reasonably be considered a commercial assumption. Rules on large exposures were not followed.’ The report goes on to accuse Iceland’s former prime minister Geir Haarde of acting with ‘gross negligence’ and claims former Icelandic central bank manager David Oddsson refused help from Bank of England governor Mervyn King.”

But there are bigger problems highlighted by this crisis worldwide:

Well, I know coz of the ash spewing from Eyjafjöll I can’t fly off anywhere today, but I can consol myself with the knowledge that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks (worldwide) on the brink of collapse in 2008. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result of the worldwide banking crisis…

Bit hard on the Colombian drug cartels, eh, what? Still, we should realise from all of this, it’s organised crime generates these hundreds of billions of £s and $s and €s – and as we all know, it’s money makes this world go around. Crime is also one of the biggest growth areas in wealth generation…

Where Wild Things

You have gone too far
into the darkness; there is
no word for it. You have
given up your name, what made
you human. You live now
at the crossroads
’entre chien et loup’;
we who love you
can no longer reel you in.

What you were
circles in its own self-referring
echoes, a distant shout
on the drizzling wind
which swam through
these leaves an hour ago
or a lifetime.

In memoriam, then,
I shape these words,
put fingers to the nouns
that you might still inhabit:
tree, rock, river, heron, wolf.

Roselle Angwin

Mum’s giant boobs suffocated boyfriend…

I just couldn’t resist this one:

“BUSTY Claire Smedley’s boyfriend nearly DIED when she suffocated him with her enormous boobs during sex.

“The mum-of-three, who has 40LL breasts, panicked when she lifted them up to find her lover Steven had stopped breathing.”

What a way to go!! See the story HERE.

Changes of Earth’s Orbital Cycle cause Changes in Climate…

“In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of Earth’s orbital cycle to changes in Earth’s climate.”

See the full story HERE.

Thought of the day

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S Thompson

Moon at Summer Dawn

In the brighter and brighter air
this tear still gleams
or this frail flame in glass
when a golden haze climbs
from sleeping mountains

It remains here hovering
on the scales of dawn
between the promised ember
and this absent pearl

Philippe Jacottet