Guest Poet

A leaf
In its prime
Green
In its shine
Shuddered and fell
Time couldn’t tell
Kissed the earth
A final goodbye
Swaying
With a gentle sigh
Unheard.. unknown..
Silently gone

Amongst many that hold on
To the tree that stands tall
The first that fell before the fall…

– Sagorika Chakrabort

I put a bic lighter in my mouth
I can taste the dirt from when I dropped it on the floor outside
but I am trying to sneak back into my house
and I cant do it with a lighter in my hand
I think the green mile is almost over
its only 11:34, I could watch it again
or I could read tao lin and go to sleep
if I read tao lin before bed will I dream of hamsters?
maybe I could dream about being a hamster
I am just a little hamster and I want a snack
I want a reese’s peanut butter cup
do hamsters eat those?
I really really really love reese’s
if hamsters don’t eat reese’s then I would rather not be a hamster
I feel like I am pretending this is profound
these are the most pathetic words I have ever bothered to write

– Gilbert Franco

Is it magic or is it madness
Flickering in the dark behind dilated eyes,
A translucent gaze yielding to me little
save the imperfect form of your approach

A sloppy seduction of my intentions
mercilessly mutilating promises
forgotten amidst pulsing carnal rhythms
drawing me into a world of mistake

Your love is non exclusionary or specific
to my form, a fluid dance among bodies
entranced by a pharmaceutical peace you
found in your indestructible youth.

In another life I may have loved you in
between myself and a better man, but
you are only mine for the night, so
from you I will take everything.

– David Williams III

Absence of heat
Absence of life
Absent from class because I could care less
About particle physics
About my future
About anything other than this warm bed right now

I saw you last Tuesday
You walked right through me
Oblivious to my existence
I stopped when you passed
To feel your breeze
A Breeze that still smells like tulips
And sticky whiskey midnights
A breeze that still leaves me
Cold

Spring is on my porch
Patiently waiting to come inside
But I’m not sure that I’m ready for guests
Spring will bring summer
Summer will call autumn
Autumn will invite winter
Again
Warmth can only lead to more
Cold

But there is toughness
In ice
Nostalgia
In Snow
Bravery
In winter
Love
In the
Cold

– Mike Schwanke

twisted in kind agony,
awash in hurried beats – I escaped walls to lectures
on how to stand knee deep in antiquity,
waiting for love to plumb, make whiny.

we’re all merry, enough – to forget a year we’ve passed.

we’re to ratiocinate vagrancies, with remorse.
but seduced by shapes, wanton geometry makes
me pluck it with my lips like a pin off a grenade,

and at times close to touch meaning, like a man, I spot faces hidden with powder cowering.

I am held back spying upon – by their anger curt,
wilted by abundance of light and no dirt.
they’ve jumped to the first age – their flesh truant.

doom struck at noon, lurched back to life,

done away with the nasty, we stuffed our troubles away.
we’ll continue to borrow our fellows’ stories.
we’re done for today.

– Shibaji Ray

Peering at words that left a mouth so saintly,
Gleaming the conspicuous motive,
Breaking every ivory tint bone once carried,
Shaking a fist at the sky above, the faulty works
Who created such monsters dressed in skin so pure
Disguised from sickening smirks, poisonous touch
Uncover yourself, rip the veil preventing your true guise
Face the sky once more, breathing its ecstasy
Only human alive in this realm of disguises

– Mahabba Alhaushabi

The Hummer Tree,
Sacred pillar of our school community.
Site of countless hummers.

All-season hummers.
The Hummer Tree bare
And party to blue-lipped, quick, cold-trembling hummers.
New growth, new blowers and blowees.
Hot, sweaty, teenage-fumble hummers,
Welcome cool shade and relative darkness
So as not to showcase the hummer too much,
Or get too hot.

And of course, dry, scratchy leaves falling on my head,
Both heads,
All the heads,
Giving head hidden from the Head
And her Deputy Head hummers.

No matter the season it was always
Cool to be given or to give
A hummer under the Hummer Tree.

©2014

– Simon Pinkerton

Coming back in the darkness
after the match
through old pit villages
with the light from newsagents
illuminating the pavements
and the lads on the bus
strike up a chorus of
‘footsteps on the dancefloor’
slamming down their boots
on the top deck
and chanting ‘heavy shoe’
The laughter, the beer fumes,
heading for home
and a night in the local.

– Jon Tait

Sleep between the leaves
in the secret dawn
of summer’s fallen shanty town.

They drowse in the clasp
of veined, watery leaflight,
in nature’s frail golden eggs,

In shells and tatters and curls
spun from the coin-washed sky.
In the quiet, cold,

Clinging to the damp walls,
red tinged their houses rattle,
turn over under the rake.

And suddenly they are trembling.
Because it is the season—
smoke swirls across the yard.

They are the meek, the helpless.
Baptized by the rain, they will not inherit.

Too small this town.

– Russell Brickey

Never thought I’d live to see
My own Octo-gen-er-ity
The daily complement of pills
Have staunched so many ills

I am the first in my line
To reach this magic time
As I stand to face
The finish of the race

Each day I go anew
To confront life’s brew
Of ache and tired muscle
Amid our diurnal bustle

I take my quotidian stand
A toast to Medicine Grand
For a long and healthy life
Buttressed by my loving wife

– Milt Montague