Friday 30 March 2007
MWC: Leigh, USA	Thursday tried to send me to my knees. The slick frost glinted soft- steam tendrils curling from the shingles. We hurried past, to school, to doctors, errands- until the hours perished, molten bronze. I almost missed it, lost to duty's clarion. Tomorrow I will stop, and look again.
MWC:Allie:Irl	I almost lost it too, The start of something big But things never go quite to plan, There are always little ends To be tied up, Then others unravel when Your back is turned. I believe they call it Life.
MWC: fordy, NZ	Life? Sometimes it seems a chaos of papers. Desk-strewn, interleaved dramas awaiting their moment of triumph when their, "I told you so" will mock your failure to spend your life reading. Then, sometimes it seems like the wind-swept call of the tussock; waving its sensuous hair on the Hills of the High Country. And I long to be pulled down into your beauty. Maybe tomorrow.
MWC: kalikan, USA	Tomorrow is overblown, trite. We're told to live in the present, to enjoy those little smiles, or maybe citric sunsets. But the present offers nothing but time. The present is enveloped in bills, paperwork, files, fights with parents, fights with spouses. The present is filled with pain from your throbbing toe or boredom from broken clocks. The present even consumes, quickly eating away at those favorite pasttimes--slowly savoring choco choco crunch ice cream, or watching your son frolic under a citric sunset. Once the sky is emptied of our favorite fruit and bespeckled with frosty-gleam, just hope tomorrow will bring less consumption, or atleast a little more ice cream.
MWC:Allie:Irl	It's a cold day over here: The hours ahead sit tingling On the plate of my new day Like many-coloured scoops of ice cream. There is so much to be done before Each one melts into the other, And all the time I thought I had Swirls in a sludge about the Useless spoon of my intention.
Prospero - United States	But if I look again I know that I will find Another year is past Will I lose more than fear That I might yet lose all?
MWC: Gyppo: UK	Ye Gods, I'm being head-hunted! But it's better than losing all... Poetry is one of those things that either comes to me in a flash - sadly with a complete absence of dramatic smoke or sound effects - or not at all.
MWC:little lubo: Scotland	Oh yes Ye Gods. They looked down on me today. Of all the corners to turn, and to think I helped it along The thick sense of something once sacred now lost has sent them screaming for deliverance to some long gone motor trade lover of tyranny in the guise of a long ago God.
MWC: fordy: NZ	Tyranny is not too strong a word as you laid about with sword pen-sharp with bitter symbols; runes upon its cutting blade. I have turned aside mightier thrusts than this parried blows from worthier foes Yet none from such as share my blood.
Saturday 31 March 2007
MWC: Terrasque, USA	The reign of feud and hatred will ever uphold, as we are fed sins by arrogant tyrants, with fiery breath and bloodied swords. It always seems evil is more mighty than good, but it isn't so, it is merely a state of the mind. Good will forever humble evil ten fold. Evil only creates the illusion of power, for it is far easier to be truly evil, than it is to be truly good - and we cling to an enigma thread of hope.
MWC: Noelgama, India	The world is an illusion Blinding everyone, concealing the truth Making you believe what you think you are seeing And seeing what you want to believe is the truth "Believe in what you think is the right thing And see that you do what is right"
MWC: Leigh, USA	Truth is, another day is spent in the taking care of others obligations, innocence, cannot be negated. Drive the children, call the friend turn the post key in the box wipe the noses, build the lunch put away the toys once more. Don't act frustrated. Smile, laugh, sit on the chair little bodies in your lap read the pictures, point out words this is red, and blue, and green here are A, and B, and C sticky pages turned once more. Lay the sweet small heads upon pillows worn and soft. Be glad you waited. Turn back the paisly window sheer- out beyond the fir-limned reach fifty northern miles far the volcano sleeps.
MWC:fordy:NZ	Yes, you may sleep now my fiery giant but even your snores are fearful to behold. You just laughed in your sleep and the lahar ran down your face like a bad cold. This time we were ready for you. Tangiwai stood your assault. This time. This time we did not surrender one hundred and fifty one souls But we still stood in awe at the power of your snore. Sleep on Ruapehu.
MWC:Allie:Irl	I awakened just a while ago To the snore of a plane going over Headed for some far-off place, The States or Oz or New Zealand. It felt strange to me Because I had just returned from Such a journey. In my dream I had been riding on a bus rigged out Like a church, With crosses on the walls, And people I used to know Sitting by me. They talked of the old days In ways that they wouldn't have done Before, The secret goings-on, Told me things about themselves That I had never known. It was as if, in dreaming of them, They had been unpeeled To become The people I once wished they had been. For they were my enemies then And now I think they might have become Something more.
MWC Lin - Holland	There was pain, such pain His last journey to the roundabout We had passed through so many times. I braked, he fell off the back seat, I cringed and silence fell He tried to recover as I carried on driving He would never know where I was going, I felt like the ulitimate betrayer. Our last journey like the man Who walks the thin green line to his death There was pain, such pain Tormented, I reached the traffic lights Will we never return this way together? Goodbye sweet brown hairy friend You cannot go on feeling this way, I love you, I hope you understand.
MWC:Camille17	Wishing and hoping for something more… a futile preoccupation. The SECRET, as many are now discovering, is “knowing” it is ours, and envisioning as already present that which we most truly desire. Who could have imagined the fire burns inside us all the time and all we have to do is activate the power and claim it. Ain’t life fine!
MWC. Bubbles. Wales, UK.	I sit quietly, in luxury, or what passes for it, thanking my angels through salt tears. Longing for the past and its static reassurance. I shuffle through the rooms of vanishing scents, searching him on my intaken breath. An envelope, hastily opened, the white triangle of a broken corner fallen to the floor on his desk, the quick last action before he closed the door. After he'd packed his clothes, after he'd searched for his keys, he'd seen that letter. His fingers touched it, and discarded it. I do the same, in fury, it was just junk mail. I look as I did before, everything appears the same, and yet he is gone. His absence has ripped my features, weighty invisibility pulls at my mouth, I am coated in ennui, I am covered by grief as thick as black treacle, sticking me to this empty certainty. He has gone. Away, to uncertain horizons where other women will hold his hand, And kiss him and feed him meals I cannot. To a shiny new job. To a life just started. Oh, how I miss him. I am to start a new life, they say, free from his dictatorship, Or see the world. Perhaps it is long overdue, one friend said, He stayed too long, so this is good, that he has gone. But I recall his white fluffed head turning to my voice, how he cried for me, lustily. In the ancient days when I was his world. Seven o'clock comes, and the meal is for one, mechanical TV laughter. No need for routine, should I walk around naked, or take a lover, or turn his room into a shrine? Oh, how I miss my son.
MWC:fordy:NZ	Sons are a heritage from the Lord So the psalmist said. I wonder what mine is doing now? Probably just gone to bed. But that's sons for you; wake when you sleep sleep when you wake. Odd that. I was a son once.
Sunday 1 April 2007
MWC:caliban1:Canada	In contemplation we are one thing it is what we do that makes us. One dark night only forty years ago I met my college roommate just return from Asia. a young man from Hope, Kansas, captain in olive drab with Silver Star speaking across the table from his empty sleeve. Two cigarettes burning and his hands shaking. It was easier for him to hurl the live grenade out the door of the helicopter than to meet my pretty young wife with his face so scarred. Today he is an honored man, not one to forget that visit, so long ago, always fresh in my mind. It is hard to say what forms a friendship and makes it last through war and peace, choices which took him south to Florida, me beyond the artic circle. Yes, we are the people unpeeled by burning in fires of action or simply eroded by the water of years playing on some rock of character inside. For so long only words on paper kept our souls in tandem despite waves of change sending us to poles of distain. There was in that first shy handshake, faded by time, some communion that has outlasted the upturning of the earth a thousand times in kaleidoscopic patterns never imagined in strangest dreams. After all these years our souls are pared down to what we are. As my eyes wander from words on the screen I wonder how actions so long ago imprint themselves so clearly on this sun drenched day in spring.
MWC chillies UK	Ah, spring again How time seems to fly Seasons merge unnoticed Without you I feel only winter When will my summer return? I cannot know
MWC Lin -Zwanenwater Nature Reserve, Holland	There was just one moment a second of thought, “Sit down” I said “Sit and comtemplate The first day of Spring” I sat, I pondered, I listened, To the song of the Greenfinch, A raw scraping sound, mean and territorial. I feel the Maron Grass, blown westward, Sprouting from within The Reindeer Moss. A day of sun and warm feelings Seeking birds, I longed for the return Of the magnificent Bluethroat. His song, bursting waxlyrical. I sat, I waited, I listened, Robin sings beside the pool whilst Blackbird is chased by her beau She bows low and runs away To the bracken below Alarm calling. He knows where to find her Greylag Geese are swimming in the pools, I count, six, seven, eight nine, ten Making notes on species found today I watched, I saw, I wrote, Oh! Wait! Just one sound I know so well, Bluethroat, back from the North, Such a teasing glimpse. My chest pounds Spring is really here and Im alive with joy.
MWC:Allie:Irl	Yes, spring is here again, And with it my ambitions To renew myself. I have laid out new plans The way a farmer does his furrows, And now intend To plant the seeds Of my tomorrows. It all needs patience, The slow treadmill walk The calorie-counted days, But the journey in itself Is interesting in prospect, The reaching out towards something That is surely the essence Of being human. I may not be about to turn The world on its head Through my vision, Or discover a cancer cure, But there is a simple pleasure To be found in laying out the map Across the table of my life, And choosing my own road To summertime salvation.
MWV: Saturnine: UK	like Gyppo, I've been head-hunted; the same gentle, steady pressure Post something, post something, add to the poem We need everyone. But, what can I say? I never write about my daily life... still, this morning I woke, uncharacteristically late My husband lay, sleeping sweetly still still smiling in his dreams and one cat, the baby substitute, was nestled in my arms. The other stretched, furry belly exposed on a make-shift pillow-bed on the ground. And I was happy, grateful. It's like Al Zolynas says: It's the same gift every day and I can't believe it ...the same gift, every day. Despite the repetition, I am always amazed.
MWC. Bubbles. Wales, UK.	The same, the same, always the same. Tread the known steps with wearisome feet and greet The sure morning. For it is always present, our sleep but plays hide and seek With the light. Touchstone for our darkness, sublime new day. All around newly born, our slumber ebbs and living beckons us to worship. Discard the blindness, tear away the ailment, scourge your senses. Purge the scab of detachment. Hush, Lark is talking to the wind, mountains sing siren songs of the ages. Beaded grass a-whisper with spiders' webs rest underfoot, glistening. The butter sun in majesty arises, her prism servant beams bestowing Jewels on the land. The salmon sky departing as Sapphire takes her hand. And a soul with blinkered eyes watches.
MWC:Johnorman. NZ	I leap involuntarily As the salmon at the gurgling Frothing foot of the rushing weir Anxious to comply with the insistent Call that more than I have is yet to be That much I know while all else is unproven I flick to the junction where stream bows to gravity Missing the point again would be tragedy perhaps for me
MWC:SweetRosalyn	I watched on Saturday Tears bubbling over like the blood that's seeped for sixty days now, watched her shake as platitudes lined her stained knickers. I watched on Sunday a green screen that blurred the world and shook a finger at me, that said 'she's dying' as I made glasses of whiskey and vodka and ale for old men, and smiled as barmaid of the year. I watched on Monday as she rocked back and forth on the floor, with her firstborn son on her lap, redirecting tributaries from his sight, and aching for the waters that had washed away her hope. [the baby still lives.] I watched on Tuesday holding the hand of her husband who spoke through a foetus lodged in his throat, as the nurses said one day or two days or ten And one in five chances echoed through the room [the baby still lives in her tightening womb] I watched on Wednesday as five became twenty as the flood became worse and they said it had started: her baby was gone [the baby still lives sent forth a placenta as a gift to her mother] I watched on Thursday as they still heard her heartbeat still waved her hand on the screen. Her mother grew blurry, unfocussed, uncertain, saw the world through long syllables that ran through her veins. Her husband grew bolder, hung onto the words [the baby still lives our baby still lives] I watched on Friday as they talked of two weeks two weeks and she'll make it she'll crawl through in red. (they tried not to think of the shape of her head.) My best friend informed me she wished she was dead. [but her baby still lives] I watched on Saturday tears boiled out like the daughter inside her as she walked from the hospital door. And I'll watch her tomorrow And I'll watch her on Monday And I'll watch when she stands by the side of the grave with a headstone as big as the coffin. I'll watch as she cries for this unfinished person; her baby; Amber Margaret Pierson.
MWC Lin - Holland	Her baby son is listening to the song of the sea, Ear to the shell that sends him messages from Mummy The rain is coming The herring gull is mewing Dogs are tugging at sea weed And barking glee to passers by. Enchantment Where is she now? What does she say? The wind is warm with just a gentle bite. Whilst children play in Cornish seas, We turn to Sally Port and head for home. The child ,shell to his ear, still listening. Hope Along the road to Hugh Town the ship has sailed, Peace prevails along the once busy street, The child carries his prize The shell, means more to him Than just a message, Assurance that soon he will see his mother again. Satisfaction
MWC:caliban1:Canada	Our poem is the quilt of life together we weave the story of this world. For those who sing in fresh spring we celebrate and dance free footed. With those others who face the sorrow of ongoing being we weep awhile feeling the eternal drama and our presence in the joy of strife.
Monday 2 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	Yes, the dramas of our lives Seem to be repeated over. We always work the same quilt With slightly different patches. When I was a little girl My mother would answer the door To find the Half-a-crown Woman Standing there. She always asked for the same thing, A half-a-crown to tide her over. I hated my mother being so mean Sending her off empty-handed. It wasn’t till years later I found she had diddled my mother Who, young and short of money herself Had fallen for her story. She was well-known as a begging ass, For never returning her borrowings, Some people work, said my mother, And some live off others. Now I’m a grown-up woman When I switch on my PC each day The Half-a-crown Woman’s children Are queing up to talk to me. My loan request has been approved, Just fill in a simple form, Or check my Barclays bank account And send the number on. There’s dodgy software from Verna With moneybak guaranty, While Mr Buba Diallo Wants an urgent word with me, It seems he’s got millions waiting In an African bank somewhere If only I will kindly stash for him A hundred million more. Whatever the advances In technology or science, It seems that nothing changes, In human nature’s design.
MWC:Lin:Holland	I'm changing my life tomorrow I’m becoming more independent each day. I’ve got nothing to stop me from travelling, Perhaps I should become gay? What if I changed my nationality? Supposing I'm black instead of white? Does my sound of my voice do your head in? Do you see a different person in me now? No longer do I wish to be a loner, I want to be social and bright. Ill give all my money to charity, Would you really care when I've gone? If you ever change the person inside you, Will you think how it is for your man? Do you love him any less on a Friday night When the beer has flowed down his shirt? Take a chance and make changes, Feel the fear and go crazy Be slim instead of fat But most of all.................... Stay focussed
MWC. Bubbles, Wales.	Focussed, hocus pocus. His magician's hands swiftly blind us Sly, fat and bald, all the bad bits Like his hidden, mould rimmed apples. The stall holder in the onion-wafted market never changes. Nor do his clothes, sackcloth moss-green itchy jacket, ox-blood leather patches on the sleeves. Patches on his patches. But he wears a real Rolex. Smile at him, perhaps he's got a wife who hits him. Or kids who pretend he's not there because they hear us say, 'Swindler.' Smile at him, he could change. Today is maybe the day he smiles at me. I always walk by, there are good apples in the supermarket at half the price. The checkout girl there wears a Timex. And smells of scent, not body odour like him, but, perhaps today he will change. Perhaps I will, my hands scrabble for a pound, in my jacket pocket. But, I can't do it, eat what he's touched. His rusty bolt voice slips under my feet and I retch on the machine oil miasma of his breath. Yes, he is unsavoury and I am not sweet. Perhaps it is me who should change.
Tuesday 3 April 2007
MWC:kalikan:USA	A pound of what? A pound of meat, a pound of dough, a pound of fat jig'ling to and fro? An ounce of knowledge, a feel for work, a gleeful poem with the slightest quirk? A poem here, a poem there, a poem from countries everywhere.
MWC:caliban1:Canada	And a poem of a far country where weather will always dare to intrude into our life, so... from six o'clock on snow fell huge white flakes floating on to the early green grass and with it the mind float into a swirl thinking of the change. That change is coming is inescapble all that matters is to see the beauty in the coldest, wettest fear. Inside the halls may wind in darkness but outside the paths in fields take us ever on new journeys and when we come to the fence remember it is only wire. One hand on the solid post even trembling as we climb it is not long before we cross to the new path over the water.
MWC - Gyypo - UK	Over the water and far away my daughter is teaching English to children who want to learn. Eighteen years old, five feet tall, and as Cornish as a Standing Stone. With a class of one hundred most of them taller and some much older. But Kizzi's in charge. Knobbly black knees forced underneath or jutting above child-sized desks. Their hard won words erased each evening so the precious paper can be used again. I glibly throw words into my keyboard whilst they clutch a short stubby pencil and wrestle with the language of hope, knowing that daydreams can come later.
MWC: Leigh, USA	Ah, the words, thrown into the keyboard, instant gratification, in black pixel on the screen. Just an insignificant wiggle, a thin mark, easily, with press of finger pad on plastic. So many years, these hands flew over the squares depressing and releasing, instinctual aim. I can tap-dance my heart and mind with fingers through channels, down my arms, and out again. Fascinated with the visual manifesto of my own mysteries revealed, lying plain almost leaping, through the space before me from my neurons to the neat reply rectangle. So far from slate and chalk dust, or the quill- All the same, still.
MWC - Lin -Amsterdam Artis Zoo, Holland	Gorilla Still, the tiny childlike ape, Cradled in the arms Of its mother Just as a human child. I watched her at the zoo, Today was Tuesday and All was quiet as I crept behind her Watching as she slept. Orangutan Borneo man, orange and arrogant, I watched your youngest son, Perform acrobatics on the iron railings. Staring out from behind the glass You were looking right through me and Me looking through you. A meeting of eyes,but no conversation. You'd had enough of visitors. Chimpanzee We opened the cage for the chimp Who poked her finger through the bars Desperate to touch me I wanted to touch her too. She tried to tell me something, Was she really happy in a cage? She gently squeezed my hand, Had I really understood her communication? Were my manners and protocol correct?
Wednesday 4 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	We touch one another Every day, Hold hands, hug, kiss. Our bodies reach and feel, We see and hear and smell and taste The presence of the other beings Who inhabit our world. And yet We are nearer to one another In our minds, In some place we cannot see. When you physically hurt yourself, I do not bleed. My blood does not run In sympathy with yours, No matter how much I wish to share Your pain. But when you are wounded in the soul I, also, cry: My soul bleeds with yours. We are joined to humanity In some secret place That is not just skin and bone. Do not tell me that the flesh is all, For my tears know different.
MWC: noelgama : India	She gets up all by herself And then she limps back into the dorm She rests her head on the pillow And through the tears Thinks of her son Her lips move as she whispers “Lord, watch & keep him when I am gone Ah! Till we meet someday up there in paradise” No one to talk to, when she’s feeling so blue No one to cry on, when the pain comes on No one to lean on, when she cannot go on She’s a destitute woman Just a destitute woman So she lays awake all the night thru Still she’s all dressed up Waiting for someone She looks up expectantly Up at the ceiling, ready for Him Tonight she’s very sure That the Lord will knock on her door Ah! Yes, tonight He’ll be callin’ on her And then there’ll be, no more feeling the blues No limp, no shame, no more tears of pain No ‘old’, no ‘young’, no more sorrow beyond She’ll be destitute no more
Thursday 5 April 2007
MWC: Saturnine: UK	The Southgate demolition is underway it looks like Baedekker's struck again mountains of rubble, concrete no longer reinforced with coiled steel strings
MWC: Leigh, USA	We met at twelve, down at the faded picnic table. The children gave no shadow. There were games, and guilty snacks in crinkling plastic wrappers. No shortage of sweet apple juice, for thirsty mouths, after clambering over painted metal castles. We watched in patient pleasure, swings and slides, and shared the age-old pleasantries of mothers. Beneath the new buds reaching for the sun, we sat in speckled shadow, looking on. Until my friend leapt up, and shot across the bark dust, a denim blur, to grab her youngest child. A girl of only two or three, she'd fallen- from atop the blue and yellow structure, a drop at least of seven feet and change. We inspected every inch, the wailing child, my friend held her close and closed her eyes. She was fine, she said, just fine, and kissed her. And indeed she was; soon, back at playing- all unaware, with wood chips in her braid. We wiped our eyes, and tried then to remember, what had been so important, just moments before.
Friday 6 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	To be a Catholic this day, when I was small, Was a very serious thing. You were not supposed to laugh or have fun, And there was no cinema or TV. Instead there was the endless church visit, Stations of the cross, and priest’s dark drone, No flowers on the altar to ease The mournful screeches of the church choir. The nuns said everyone should be miserable Because Jesus had been put to death. That didn’t make sense to me, however, Since Jesus was God and couldn’t die. On a day supposedly of redemption, When all the world was cleansed. I thought everyone should have been smiling And shaking hands. I know now the sadness was another myth, Just a grown-up pretence. The glum faces were because the pubs were barred, Making Good Friday anything but.
MWC:caliban1:Canada	It is Good Friday here birds singing and the grass growing, it is the spring air of Easter time, a holy time to many lifting spirits. I feel a great connection to the whole creation and do not doubt that some intelligence has made this for all creatures to perceive. The hows and whys are debated by wise and foolish and are cause for hate for some who cannot see behind the glory that is the world in which we live. We know that today many are joyful while some, fellow beings, just as much, suffer for sins they did not commit. The only true saviour speaks quietly urging us to love, forgive, and practice joy. Our undertaking is to live until we know this reality.
MWC - Gyppo - UK	Reality? Today I found it's still there. Lurking inside aching muscles and 'clickety' joints. Despite 'those damned adrenaline blockers' the Warrior still lives, inside the easygoing Hippy. An aggressive young thug picked the wrong 'old git' to annoy. No bloodshed on either side but, when I turned, uttering words of peace, he saw a different message in my eyes, dropped his own, and shuffled away, as if he were the older man.
MWC:kalikan:USA	Past the thousand pound shoulders, past the leaden chin lies a shame that smoulders, a dreadful thought within. Actions are more powerful than words, But what of words laced with poison, poured about through a perforated mouth for the roots of all to hear. Or maybe even words like cracked stained glass, clinking about the bloodied ears of all shined upon by its glory. Blood and flesh are part of me, yet are they mine or are they His?
Saturday 7 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	There is no way to answer this Until we understand The whole story. Were we written once, And for all time? Or are we just a draft Of something better, Full of crossings-out and Insertions, Ready to be cut and pasted Onto new pages? Does the author sit down In the middle of the eternal day To rewrite our souls? Where will we find the answer? In a church, Or elsewhere?
Sunday 8 April 2007
MWC:Melita:UK	He'll be at church now, always on Easter Sunday, with pious clasped hands to please his mother. Trying to sit still and work out what the Bible means, except he only correlates words with music. He boasts a five-string bass, which he plays lazily and sings in a growl to rival Tom Waits. He adds drum'n'bass beats to the organ, freestyles the middle 8 of a hymn, hums ska riffs to himself and wondering how he came to drink several too many after they played the blues last night.
MWC:caliban1:Canada	In this windy place on Easter morning, it is nature playing drums on the roof, and again there is a southwesterly with rain carrying information from the sea. Somehow it is clear this was all meant to be; it is left to us to read the signs. We all play our part in the design, some are dancing in tropical light, while others look out through darkened windows. Here we come together to make a sort of worship not suited for the church, but in its way an offering to eternal good. if the waving of branches in the sky is to be properly understood. Give thanks by offering a word for out grand enterprise of poesy.
Monday 9 April 2007
MWC. Bubbles, Wales, UK.	Yes, let us give thanks, with our hands clasped around golden plastic, or blue, tapping number codes. Trying to get through. Hunting in Mammon's chantry whilst You Arise anew, each year less lauded than the last. In stoned basilicas and lilaced chancels the faithful sing hushed songs of Hope in a slowly dying language. The Gate stands ajar for the returning. Inviting and invisible. We wait in a queue, maimed ears untuned to their music.
MWC Stupot UK	We wait in the eternal queue, for the Reapers finger on our shoulder, the signal of our impending Judgement. But is there a Judgement? Or only soil or ash and the science of decomposition.
MWC:Allie:Irl	Talking of decomposition, There is something about this Easter That seems to have depressed the spirits. Poets have begun to look inwards, Towards some hidden mystery, Rather than examining the world around them. Could it be the recurring sound of distant Iraqi bombs, the posturing of Iran, The British Ministry of Defence allowing Its newly-released sailors To sell their stories to the tabloids, In a bizarre act of prostitution, Or the timpanic tales of global warming, With their apocalyptic visions Of a thousand tsunamis and lost worlds Ucovered beneath the poles, Or even the strange and once unimaginable Sight of Ian Paisley sitting down With Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, That make the world seem so like a dream These days, and nightmare often? Perhaps there is nowhere else for poets To retreat to, But their own castles in the air, Seeking the comfort of Their own unrealities.
MWC. Bubbles. Wales, UK.	Be kind to me, tread gently on my transience. I am my touchstone. Remember my fragility, then pile the reasons high. I live, they lived, and vapourous spawning billions will also have the pleasure. This leperous ship of black cracked glass, spotted with lustful greed, sails on, un-caring and un-hindered. Unstoppable and vast she floats across your conquered bones. Yet safe in the cabins of pointed fingers and at our captain's table of shame, all lifetime's crewing is the same. No improvement, no blame. Take us back to the beginning, then, whoever You may be. Why don't you shake us till we squeal? Or give us peace to know we are no worse or better, no crueller, than those who went before. Please.
Tuesday 10 April 2007
MWC:Melita:UK	I whispered 'Please' as the tugboat pulled the black freight in, and we waited on the shoreline. I watched you, unlovely child, pottering with shells and crabs and seaweed in the dawn light. The boat crunched on the sand, loud against the soft curving of morning. You wandered further as they heaved the hull higher, beaching the boat. I saw the black shape, still. A man nodded and the others watched for my reaction. They murmured words to me about approximated time of death, times of high tides and explanations for suicide. I nodded and they left. You were half a beach away by now, half a world. I called you back, and tried to summon enough moisture from dry sea air to tell you 'Baby, your Daddy's gone.'
Wednesday 11 April 2007
MWC. Bubbles, Wales, UK.	Away to the playing fields of imagination, blithe obscurity, the obscenity of living over and done. Hush, here come the rattled assurances, the bare faced beliefs. The indent of toes in disgarded shoes, spectacles in drawers. Pass them on to the Third World. In India, molecules of you will sit on darker bridges. Virgin morning and cruel birds still uninformed, sing aloft, undiminished by my loss. One day ago. So long ago. Where are you now, no, don't answer, for I know where you'll be in a ragged week? I want to walk the sands of Bali in a procession. I saw it once, a bright edged page I turn when in search of beauty. Would you prefer the soft slap of the waves, you, ashy, on the knitted palm tree platter? Away, away to the deep, people could be smiling and dressed in pink. And yellow. Hushed bells would sing, and friends whisper songs of the earth. Shall I take you there?
MWC, Saturnine, UK	I wish I hadn't taken me there Easter weekend with the outlaws and though my father-in-law's words were most certainly not poetry to my ears perhaps we can relish them here in their full comic glory. he talks at you like a steamroller all that's wrong with the world how things should be never a question, "How are you?" never any sharing of goodwill just a constant barrage of racist, sexist, ill-informed statements - Over dinner: "the worst thing we ever did in this country was let in all these immigrants In twenty years' time, we'll have no racial purity!" (I, being of one of the offending races am still stunned into silence by these statements his son-in-law, also too dark by half, just gapes, though pictures of the three "half-caste" grandchildren grace the kitchen) ....and still, over coffee "It all went wrong when we let women own property: that's why there's so much divorce in this country - If a woman's not happy in her marriage, she can just leave whenever she wants!" ....and on, over breakfast: "Young people don't know the meaning of work spoiled by the nanny state they are if they'd had to graft on the land like I did... well, they wouldn't do it, we'd all starve!" over and over and over and still, into the night the things he would ban overnight, if he were in charge: budget airlines (as long as he could still travel freely) duty free shops employee pensions annual pay rises for workers mixer taps side mounted wing mirrors car radios TV broadcasts after 11 pm trade unions alcohol for the working classes belts without braces and on and on and on and on. I wish I could have him banned overnight.
MWC:Allie:Irl	Can we ever really know another person, Without hearing what he says? I think we can. This gaunt man walking towards me Bent over with the weight of Some terrible burden, Perhaps an unhappy marriage, Or a rift with his father way back in youth, Or the cutting sadness of losing a child, I do not see him as a scientist might, A skeleton clothed, A mechanism that works this way or that, An outward specimen of mankind, But naked in his being, as if some magical vision Had entirely revealed him to me. I see his savage hungers and his pride, The things buried deep within his nature that His mother glimpsed That first moment he was laid upon her breast. I clearly see what he has been And what he will become. His truth flashes across the closing distance Between us, This man I have not spoken to, nor ever will, Who is not even aware of me or my scrutiny, Whose eyes rest briefly on me, Unnoticing, and then look away. This stranger now approaching, I know him well, As if we occupied the same groove, Shared the same sadnesses and joys. Now we have reached one another, and For just one moment I breathe inside his skin, Then am left bereft as he passes by.
MWC:Prospero:USA	The dancing jester skirts the narrow edge his face a skull of unredeemed dreams and follies into my sleep he comes and whispers to me vast secrets that pass into chill oblivion as I wait and wake into a somber day of rain and snow where no birds sing
MWC: Gyppo UK	The Jester grew bored at his desk and turned off the processor. He donned his motley, of muted Greens and Browns, not the red and yellow of tradition, and walked out to see the world. Spring was in the air, with the scent of flowers and the perfume of Young Ladies. And people were smiling. Yes smiling at strangers, even at the weird Hippy in his tatterdemalion rags. The girls parade their fashions, some with the innocence of the truly virginal, their eyes bright with curiosity but without speculation. Without the 'I know now' look which shows they can't help wondering. Sharply dressed businesswomen sit on park benches, limbs neatly arranged as artificially perfect nails peck fastidiously at 'lean cuisine', every calorie balanced against their ideal self image. Not a crumb falling to feed the waiting pigeons. Perfect hair, immaculate clothes, subtle perfume - never overdone - and a perfectly painted mouth. Impeccably correct body language. Nothing to offend, and nothing to please. But at the snack waggon the gypsy-dark girl wears a shapeless smock, a natural unpainted smile, and the welcoming fragrance of freshly grilled Bacon. She wears it all with a casual grace that Ms Perfect could never match.
MWC:Johnorman: New Zealand	Aye, prospero lad, skull I did, to the island. Me and Miranda, comely lass of my own making. Unversed though, in the powerful loosener of my tongue. Is it my will leads me to fanciful flights where no sparrow dare fly, or yours, as when leading adoring crowds whence you willed. Spearing with barbs. shaving off a pound here or there, or in a country where cheese is princely currency. Off course we drifted several times; a tortuous voyage I reckoned my bro could never recreate, but he did. In the process enticing black sorcery to twine wispish tendrils around my burdened soul. To the point where willingly I will cast it overboard, for seabirds to argue about interminably, and longer.
MWC:Saturnine:UK	my cat loves seabirds loves their call, echoing in the garden loves their feathers, as they scatter the soil but more than that she loves my computer loves its inexhaustible warmth loves the purr of its ancient fans She loves too, the underfloor heating the hum of the washing machine and that ultra-toasty space between me and my man under the covers, while we sleep sometimes daring to squish her, a cosying feline, the jam in the sandwich.
MWC:SweetRosalyn: Wales,UK	My cat's called Kayla and she only cost eight pounds. I bought her in the queue at Matalan. I'd been buying clothes, tiny little boy clothes for a friend, and when I looked at teething rings and 3-6 month bathing suits I felt small and big at the same time. I was 6 years old my little sister sucking everything and spilling baby food on bibs. Her nappies smelled (I still remember how to fold them from a terry cloth, I think, the memory's just hiding) I had toys a bear that growled bugs bunny who hopped around the house (we hopped out of the front door once before we got too scared and hopped right back) a dolls tea set in a polystyrene case so precious that even I never broke it. I know I have a man to hug me now when I am sad or down I know I have a job and pay council tax and vote I know. I ought to whisper this next part, because I am too big for small but still too small for big: I want to buy boy clothes in 0-3 and nappies and bibs and fluffy stuffed cats called Kayla. I don't want to buy them for friends or cousins or nieces and nephews. I want to be big but I can't. It's harder to grow than it is to shrink. So tonight I'll curl up with my cat (whatever my boyfriend might think.)
Thursday 12 April 2007
MWC:Melita:UK	My feet have shrunk. When did that happen? Somewhere between 16 and 18, my average size 5's reduced to tiny splayed size 3's, so that I can wear vintage now. Did my feet overshoot? And when I reached 5 foot 3 and stopped, they had to recede, to balance me out. Shouldn't they have known I'd never be more than 5 foot 5? Daughters are never taller than their fathers, just as sons are never shorter than their mothers, it's the way it works. Simple drip-stream genetics, I tell them, when they say I'm too small. I can't make me bigger, when my grandmother barely scraped 5 foot and weighed seven stone. Seven's my lucky number, which is good because I'm stuck with it, because I can't make me bigger.
MWC:Allie:Irl	There are apparently people All over the world who feel That the number seven holds Special significance for them. I wonder why that is: What is it about two humble lines That they have such charisma? The number isn’t even correctly written Nowadays, as originally the upright Had a bar across it, and there was Another line at the base, All important so that the number of Angles amounted to the seven, That gave it its name. There is something very roundabout About all this, as if numbers Count themselves, without our input, Having no need of us. Would the number seven still exist If there were no one to count it? Or is there a mathematical heaven Where numbers will live eternally Even when there is nothing left In the universe to be counted? And will all numbers then be absorbed Into the one big nought? Questions like this are numberless, And may have an answer somewhere, But it's certainly not one that's Inside in my head.
MWC Gyppo UK	Inside my head strange things happen. Fragments of folk lore meet with the modern world, each twisting the other into something unfamiliar. Inside my head strange things happen. Two plus two can become five, or three, or something truly bizarre 'thriddly- umpty-six' or the magical three-point-one-four-two. Inside my head strange things happen. Dreams become reality and reality fades into dreams. Tales are born and jostle for position, some to escape and others to stay hidden. Inside my head strange things happen. Things which would terrify a non-writer. But I have a safety valve, the gift of words which keeps me sane when, inside my head, strange things happen.
Friday 13 April 2007
MWC:fordy:NZ	Inside my head? Perhaps. In there it seems much larger, too large, to be in there. I dreamed that I was lost. Deep in a forest of ideas, surrounded by thoughts that mocked my inability to grasp their purpose. Can infinity be contained in such a small space; Inside my head? In there is out there, doorway to eternity. I must go in to get out, become nothing to become everything. In embracing the little me I embrace the cosmos. Inside my head.
MWC:chillies:UK	Inside my head I am what I always wanted to be, what I always dared to be. Inside my head, there is no procrastinating and no questions starting with But... Inside my head is the real me.
MWC:Lin:The Netherlands	Sometimes the real me Isn't me at all I can change into A kind of Jeykll and Hyde A person with no name So who am I? I am me without a name Half of this person is me The other half is her The one who makes decisions Does the shopping Kisses the husband goodbye And walks the dog each day The other person is me Wishing I wasnt her. I'm floating on a dream Being somewhere else Listening to music Thinking exotic thoughts Wearing bikinis and walking On white beaches, Hand in hand with a man Who is so like the one I know so well I play safe. Isnt life a game anyway?
MWC. Bubbles, Wales, UK.	I'm everyone I know, and they are me. I'm no-one I want to be and they're not me. Never could be. For that I'm thankful. Who'd want this dustbin frontal lobe filled with Magpie hordes of specious vapour? And bits of things I plan to do later? Not me, not me. Now it's Aubades, which replaced the knitting I found half finished, in my attic. Later I'll be Salsa dancing, or chewing the cud with Tom, who's eighty five and twinkly. No wrinklie, he still drinks pints in the pub. His shaky stories flooding my mind of milk maids, canings from teachers, and the War, long gone. And how computers won't catch on. All this crammed into my head, and more. Will spurious facts make my brain fatter fodder for the grass and worms?
Saturday 14 April 2007
MWC:caliban1:Canada	Sometimes I think am a place, in Puerto Vallarta, loco gringo, galloping along a trail, past the meeting place the Mexican friends laughing and cheering. Later playing at Don Guerillmo in the restaurant drinking Margueritas while two crazy Frenchmen make music with a green plastic pipe and a mandolin. Waving from the balcony to Aplollonio, riding down to the beach for tourists. But that Christmas in Yelapa, we were dismayed at drunken American friends who swaggered into the village mass. The tall dignified senor with a patched knee quietly stood and left the church and I asked the mad revelers to follow on out. On the next day after Christmas, the priest crossed the bay and we had mass. Our friend Berta, who shared her home, thanked us for coming to church that day. Truth to say, it is easy enough to go to church on Christmas day with unglazed windows open to jungle. Never in the North have I seen such glass. Later the drunken people reveled on the beach in black plastic bags shaking sparklers so that I could love their jolity again. After all I am the same wild boy who jumped out of college dorm windows laughing and waving to people on the ground. In the prairies I always feel my Indian blood wanting to go running after thundering buffalo or creeping out through the long grass just to see what bird is nesting there. In the mountains I am a colder being, climbing up mountain goat trails, turning back to see where we have been. In France I am my wife's husband as we sit on church steps up above the all too rich golden coast. Later in the pleasant garden talk goes on among the many dishes. Here the family outlives the whims of change; someday we must all go home. She to her village in the hills, I to my redbrick house on the Chisholm trail Always there is something in us of the places we inhabit.
Bubbles. MWC. Wales, UK.	'You can take the girl out of the valleys, but never the valleys out of the girl.' Flimsy from wear, this cliched phrase still does the rounds. Endlessly altered to 'Manchester,' 'The Sticks,' or 'London Town.' Employed when labels are needed by those who feel safer, boxing people in. Cliche weeds, fast spreading, unwanted, their tortuous milky roots are facts, not fiction. The irritant grain within the lustrous pearl swallowed by the maw of clam still is but sand under candescent layers. One jewelled chance, a million more to lay beneath the feet of Amphitrite, unknown, unhindered. Flimsy cloaks of geography and chance donned for the journey, shed at last leaving the core of us polished or cracked, but still a grain of sand.
MWC: Leigh, USA	A rain of pearl from pollen winds dusts the hot black shine upon the Ford and competes with the gossamer upon my tow-heads, bounding on new grass. While you cast a whizzing line, miles to the west, your shaded eyes beseeching a flashing prize from Poseidon. I may rest here and contemplate, or jump and join the 'crack-the-whip' c'mon, Mom, come, we need one more and breathe the delicate moment's fragile gift.
MWC:Allie:Irl	Once there was a world that contained Rare and treasured moments When a grown-up would give In a mute, smiling act of kindness, A penny or a thrupenny bit, Letting fall into a child’s hand The small change from a packet of Woodbines, or the Irish Press, As if it were nothing, To be gazed at in awe by one To whom it meant much: As sometime recipient, how well I remember such moments. But now that I’m the one who can Afford to bestow these gifts, The world has moved on; Such gestures are no longer always Welcome, but can bring suspicion And fear. How sad it is that I cannot Repay the kindness of those Who trod the way before me, by Carrying on the good deeds that Warmed many a young heart. In this new order of things Children are not the only victims: I, too, have been wronged.
Monday 16 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	To post or not to post, that is the question. Whether tis nobler for the poet to suffer The troughs and hollows of the Longest Poem Or to take words against a sea of silence And by her posting end it? To write: to post; No more and by a word to say we end The deadly quiet of non-posters That the thread is heir to, ‘tis a composition Devoutly to be wished; to write; to post; To post, perchance to spoil; ay, there’s the nub, For in that post at length what thoughts may come When we have rattled off this mortal poem, Must give us cause; there’s the haste That makes calamity of so long poem, Amid the poet's last, despairing cry of Please, please, let me not be the only one.
MWC: Gyppo: UK	The Longest Poem, like the Longest Road cannot be travelled in haste. This electronic medium measured in nano-seconds, cannot accelerate my brain. In three line verse I search for speed, but it's not there. Soon I'll sleep but first I end this verse With three terse lines.
MWC:Johnorman:NZ	The Only One He heard it strike each trunk in turn, losing clarity with each bounce until finally, Let me not be the only one faded to Only one then Nowt like they said in Liverpool, when he was a scouser long ago. Now he was a scouser a long way from the Pool, where the breed is seldom seen. In fact, he wonders if perhaps he is the only one, fading to become nowt in a forest where memories bounce into nothingness and need be sent again, reminding the sender he at least is still there, whatever the reason originally intended;perhaps, will be there forever, calling out to nowt, seeking recognition from someone or thing that knows him not, never will. He has love-life with each surrounding tree, felt every curve, smooth hollowed trunk, touched their trembling leaves. Perhaps that is all was ever intended -the only one from Liverpool at home somewhere else.
Tuesday 17 April 2007
MWC:Caliban1:Canada	Wandering here in a forest of imagination, we can by mysterious happenstance trail into a real forest inhabited by unreal characters, such as the mad mechanic with his crock pot of chicken simmering in the shop, while we walk across wet spring fields carrying three cans of Alberta Draft to wild haired Cameron Einstein who lives above. Since I am out to pick Trillium in the woods for my lady love. We all go tramping out through swamp and blackberry brambles onto the horse trail hacked out with machetes, taking us by birch and fir, cedar, hemlock and plentiful alder. On the forest floor green curled ferns turn up, and small purple monkshood begins to unfold. As the mad mechanic said it is a whole different world and I am wondering why these two bizarre friends and a shy twenty year old French girl are all who come out here in the woods to pick flowers. It makes no more sense than the rhythm of moods, with a grim and self murdering darkness in the early morning becoming a dizzy dancing joy with the sentients of afternoon. In all of this there is no pattern of discernable meaning, but we are carrying on forward with the hope of all eternity. Remembering always that it is better to laugh with the cosmos than to lie wailing in sorrow in the darkness of the glen.
Wednesday 18 April 2007
MWC: Leigh, USA	One humid evening years ago, we stole into the sigh of darkness, hand in hand, past the bedtime. On an itchy blanket, we laid against the plaid, and lost our sight to fathoms of stars, pinning us to the earth. We felt the rush of aeons diminish our id. We spun beneath the cold cold void. I felt your tremor. When I asked why, you whispered your secret fear- of gravity releasing you, off the orb into the night. Last night I lifted groceries and, passing to my door, I tried but could not resist the pull- I turned my gaze to the yawning heavens, shot with cold fire. I see you there, my sister upon the velvet canvas falling forever into eternity.
Thursday 19 April 2007
MWC:Lin:Holland	I miss my hills and mountain sides The land in which I live works perfectly In Harmony with tulips, dijkes And greenest grass. A canvas of Rembrant, Vincent and Franz Hals, A place of numerous museums, Tall ships and fishing boats. But, there is something comforting About hills. They fold around you Like Grandma used to do On a Sunday afternoon visit. They kiss you when you reach The top of Great Gable And Blencathra when you follow In the wake of Wainwright's footsteps I cannot stand above a town Looking down to coastline from above I cannot sit and ponder by a tarn, My comfort zone has been flattened Engineered by years of building dijkes Men wearing clogs and dressing their Windmills toward the cold North Sea Im coming home soon to see it all again
Saturday 21 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	I feel a little lost today, As if my mind were away somewhere Wandering in a unfamiliar forest With no comforting landmarks To guide me safely home. I suppose we all get days like this When we are strangers even to ourselves, And the world is full of goblins and witches And dragons in caves. It is the mythical uncertainty that underlies The apparent reality of our normal hours, The realisation that perhaps All may not be as it seems, But suddenly the shadows on the wall Cast by the leaping flames Seem to hold a message for me Of a strange time to come.
Sunday 22 April 2007
MWC:Lin:Holland	A strange time indeed Is Sunday afternoon, Lazy Sunday? Oh no! A day of garden centres, New plants And gardening projects. All is not as it seems, Holland has come alive With coloured stripes. Farmers stand alone In fields That were once green We all get days like these, Germans stop by the road Taking photos of tulips. They are amazed. Coloured stripes Instead of cauliflowers and wheat
Tuesday 24 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	Whole days like these Pass as if unnoticed, Unwritten and unmarked By strange or cataclysmic events, Days of contentment or endurance But not especially joyful or sad. They have been full of hours That have each been full of separate moments, Each one lived consciously but not recalled. Only the births and deaths And holidays and tragedies Are recorded in labelled mental files. Whole days pass as if unnoticed, Yet it has not really been so. Each moment has left its signature In a cell somewhere, And in the growing grass And the constantly changing sky. If we could interpret the message it has left us We could read the history and the meaning Of our lives.
Wednesday 25 April 2007
MWC:wildlegends:UK	I was born to live and live I must ’Till eons of time turn body to dust. To live is to suffer, to relish a death And pray to the gods that you draw your last breath. To live is to suffer, pay pleasure with pain And curse all the fools who claim to be sane. Then turn in the evening and look to the west And feel your heart aching for death in your breast; Then wake in the morning and gaze to the east And see ’gainst the sun the dread of the beast. Image of black on bloodied field, Image of torment that never can yield While echoing, ancient screams unfold, Lost tales of dread and horror untold Save when in darkness they’re portrayed In dreams of love long since betrayed.
MWC: paramour:USA	Tulip Time in Michigan - what a time to be alive! The temperatures are warming up, and the skies are blue and clear. The crocus push their pointy heads out of the frozen earth, unfurling their purple and yellow coats the most colourful around! Next to rise are the Narcissus - Daffodils the common name. Buttery, bright and pink these days - not just yellow anymore. Finally the tulips reign the royalty of the season. Every colour of the rainbow seen, the cooler temperatures work their magic. Reds as deep as the richest blood, Whites and creams and blues. Blushes of pink, violet and green, flames of orange, and black as night. So, curse if you will the winter days when the snow and bitter winds blow; If not for this lull and rest for the bulbs, they simply would not bloom.
MWC: Gyppo: UK	So curse if you will the cold Winter days, when the waggon ruts are frozen like iron, and you have to break ice to water your horse and long before dawn you're all woken by the muskero (the copper) with a sheet in his hand, full of words, but you don't have the readin'. So he spells it all out, and it's time to move on because some nervous gauje's been bleatin'. So you harness the horse then struggle to break the cold iron rims from the mud, and your shoulders are raw as you heave at the waggon, and the kids are all wailin' and weepin'. And the muskero looks on, sixteen stone of hard brawn, well fed and well rested but not interested in muddying his hands on the wheel. But later that year you awake before dawn, just turned three am, it's already too warm, It's barely three hours since you went to bed with the music and tales still filling your head. You forget the cold winters, the starve belly time, it's Appleby Fair, the whole tribe is here, with horses to sell and chop tacho. With boxing an' courting and straight dealin' too it's a time to be thankful for livin'.
Thursday 26 April 2007
MWC: chillies UK	Living, is that what you call it? More like existing. One day fades into another. Weeks turn into months, and then into years. I still remain in the same state, not progressing - not moving on. I am a statue: I see the world, I grow old with time, but I am unable to connect.
MWC: paramour:USA	I woke up this morning and looked into the mirror. I saw a woman where a girl should be. Though the hair is grayer and the lines are deeper, the smile is more vibrant and shines through the eyes. The smile has gained sentinels at the corners, to guard against the blues. Hope springs eternal. I am alive.

MWC: Johnorman: NZ	Good Lord! I am still alive. Impossible I'm . . . mumble, mumble. With me teeth out. Kids almost as aged as me. Looking even older. Sick of asking how I am. If my life insurance is paid up. How much more to pay. On the house. Seldom do I tell the truth. Preferring devilish satisfaction. Such as keeping them guessing. Unaware I'm just ahead of. Bankruptcy. Penury. Senility.
Sunday 29 April 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	Today I feel bankrupt of ideas, poor in Desire to write down my life. Perhaps it’s a form of senility that makes Everything around me look the same As it did yesterday, and the day Before that. The question is, Should I write, no matter that what I write Might not amount to anything much? Should the act of writing something, anything Down, be a simple one of defiance Undertaken in the face of mundanity? Who says that only the perfect piece Has the right to be called poetry? Surely The recording of a world that is imperfect Would be better done through a poem That is itself imperfect? Would the words then Not more truly reflect it back to itself?
Monday 30 April 2007
MWC:Candy:Scotland	It's three weeks since my fingers danced, put words to screen, my mind in trance. Now they have a differant chore, that crackes my skin, dry and sore. A saviour, I know, is on the way, my hands will dance again some day.
MWC Lin - The Netherlands	Its been a long time since I danced The Twist or Mashed Potato, My father taught me how to waltz And on his toes I used to stand Kneehigh, looking up at the belt On his grey trousers, and the zip That hid a secret only Mummy knew. His old brown shoes and my little feet Would slide around the floor Falling over each other in clumsy steps Forward, side, together, repeat and... One, two, three. We laughed At how I would never make a dancer If I didnt stand up straight. I grew up remembering how to Waltz I never forgot the days I stood On my father shoes, pretending to dance. The days of Rock and Roll and Johan Strauss Were somehow intermingled in time. Many years have passed and I reckon Just maybe, I could do it all again.
Tuesday 1 May 2007
MWC: paramour:USA	Sunlight dancing on the waves of the lake, I see a glimmer of life all around. The snow is gone and the flowers are up! Winter's death is the birth of spring! Seagulls cry for joy in the air while the waves murmur their lullaby, and kites dance among the clouds. My shoes are filled with sand. How fast the seasons turn about; back and forth they flip through time. I feel the silky smoothness of time is an endless dance with God.
MWC: Leigh, USA	I close my lids, soon lost, hid in the silken wheat- washed in the strands of purity she unknowing shares. Upon the narrow wooden bed, I insinuate myself, my common, clumsy, adult self, beside the sleeping pixie. Let me absorb some innocence- some overspill of paradise, to calm a mother's fear. Let her drift on, in slumber never feel this watery salt, I drop upon her cheek. Shh, shh, I murmer, it's okay... to Mother and to Daughter. These days of monetary want, of stomach-clenching anxiousness, will also pass. Just as the transient down upon her silken cheek- wearing a mother's tear, a tiny diadem.
Friday 4 May 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	You would think a mother would know her son: The day is bright and and saucy with surprise. And I am looking at everything in a new way. You imagine that you know your son, Know him well, the way he thinks and feels, And what might be on his mind: Money And getting on in life; next year's wedding bells; Going for a few jars with some old friends; Maybe a holiday somewhere in Spain; And making plans, just the normal run of things. You think you know him well and then you find That he has a secret side: Behind closed doors Away from prying eyes, he has been following you In writing down his life.
MWC Lin The Netherlands	How to be proactive Ive tried to teach my son Think ahead, work very smart and listen to your Mum But no matter how I try his mind is somewhere else Proactiveness does not compute, it leaves an awful mess. Last minute is the daily theme"Ive lost my keys again" "Well that isn't my fault darling son, Im not the one to blame" "My travel pass got stolen, but I've found it in my pocket I didnt shave, the foam ran out, Im late for work, oh! focket!" With face in hands I quite despair and wonder how to teach Proactiveness, its too late- for now his life's a beach!
Sunday 6 May 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	A dark day feels like despair, Coming after so many that were bright: It somehow seems darker Than dark days we’ve known before. We’ve grown used to the light and must Now adjust ourselves to darkness Once more. We do it every year, but gradually, Growing through autumn into winter, Losing a little light with each passing minute, So that we hardly notice the loss. But to waken this morning to an overcast sky After weeks of sunshine Seems somehow alarming, Almost like a warning Of further darkness to come: The cataclysmic darkness that lies In wait for us all. But now momentarily the day has cleared again, And despair seems like an exaggeration Of dark thoughts against the brightening sky.
MWC: paramour:USA	Orange red and yellow bird in a bright blue sky of fluttering cloth gliding attached to a smiling child. Stings laced in little fingers played like Latin guitars, are the only connection from our earth to God's heaven. Laughing children squeal delight the brilliant bird comes crashing down! Sandy shoes run for dear life, lifting the kite to touch the sun! Again the rainbow eagle soars! So high it seems alive. The breaking string it's freedom brings at the cost of a child's tears...
Monday 14 May 2007
MWC: Leigh: USA	I saw an eagle in the zoo, a Bald Eagle, 'Haliaeetus leucocephalus' the wooden sign proclaimed. Atop a deadend tree, stripped of its bark, a huge brown mass of feathered strength, topped by the distinctive snow. I marveled at the nest, of heavy branches, huge, and intricate, secure upon that reach. We watched from down below, his amber eye frowned upon us, deadly beak a hook. And far above, the open sky was cyan, not a cloud, and we could see the birds the starlings and the robins, wheeling free, above the metal mesh that yawned between. I was only ten, but I remember the sign that said the eagle's outspread wing could reach seventy-five, to eighty inches. I still can see that dome that came between.
MWC:Allie:Irl	Sometimes something comes Between me and my attempts To write. It's not that I can’t think Of anything to put down; far from it, My mind teems with all kinds Of possibilities, but somehow they don’t Translate to the page the way I would like. Oh, they leap out vivid And bright enough, but then they flop Down lifelessly, as if they needed My passion to keep them going. It’s a bit Of a mystery to me why some ideas Travel around the world by themselves In what amounts to perpetual motion, While others just lie there, inanimate Bundles of letters without a soul To energise them. Hey, speaking of souls, Do you suppose that God ever suffers From writer’s block?
MWC:Saturnine:UK	You know, I was talking to God the other day She said, "Hey kid, don't sweat it, you worry too much. I like you, I've always liked you. I wouldn't have made you this way if it wasn't what I wanted." I'm thinking, "What about all the murderers and axe-rapists and stuff?" but don't say it aloud. Doesn't do to diss the almighty after all... Still she says, "Don't worry, I know the end: It all works out. Trust me. And when it comes to writing, remember what I told Kaylin Haught: 'Yes, yes, yes' "
MWC: Lin: The Netherlands	Oh yes - Holidays, it's that time again. Beach shoes only worn three times a year Are lost at the bottom of the wardrobe. "I dont remember wearing that!" I say. Its cold in the UK, I take every conceivable garb to cover all weathers. Three suitcases, Nordic walking sticks and heavy boots. Im going over the sea to T-Eilean Sgitheanach, That's Skye to you the Sassenach. To Sleat and Broadford Bay sailing the Lochs. If I had my total freedom I would spend Every day writing about Scotland and the Western Isles Breathtaking views of the Cullins call me back, Roll on Thursday!
Tuesday 15 May 2007
MWC: Melitta: UK	Off Scotland's West coast is a whirlpool, the world's third largest, the Corrievreckan. It has another name, too, they tell me. But we won't scare you with it. I wonder what could scare me more than a 700- foot hole in the ocean, surging grey water swelling against Jura's radius. The boat seats six, just, and two terriers. Sue chain-smokes in her tight life-jacket, her husband at the helm, mock sou'-wester cocked while the reluctant artist sucks down her nausea. We at the back, twenty years between us, both with childish red grins and plastic cups of Cava, our faces in the spray. She yells over the engine How does it feel to be a mile from the Gateway to Hell?
Sunday 20 May 2007
MWC: fordy: NZ	Last night as hot as Hell too much for an Autumn night I lay tossing sleepless in the still darkness until you came down our street at eleven-thirty-three P.M. You drunken lout banging gates playing footy with the beer cans left ready for the rubbish man in the morning Boy were you noisy just you on your own thrown out when the isobars closed running down the gradient of barometric pressure to hurl yourself against the walls of my castle But I closed the windows pretending you weren't there and lay tossing in the darkness listening to your cacophonous brawl as you vent your spleen for all to hear To whom can one report a Nor'west gale?
Monday 21 May 2007
MWC: Paramour: USA	May time warmth a fickle darling this season, as cold comes to kiss the ground we walk on. A warning of frost - No advisory this! If only a snow could be so quitely bold. Run! Little posies! Run! as fast as your little green legs can carry you! I won't tell your secret! Hide in the garage under the car! It is safer there than under the stars, their sparkling eyes can find you in the darkness. The sun will chase them away come morning; the only witness to their cruelty are the frozen tears glittering on your purple faces.
Friday 25 May 2007
MWC: Melita: UK	I imagine he is purple-faced, a Dickensian father-figure evil stepmother on hand to kick you out. How could you deny something so fundamental to you? Your ability to love, regardless of who, is something he can't know now. Because he can't fathom that you, his son, could share a bed with another man and be happy. Why not tell him you're in love with something, everything, the moment, the moon. See how his face shrinks; he can't fathom your ability to love. But we can. So put on the neon, it's only here once: you're eighteen, baby, and it's time to dance the night away.
MWC:Allie:Irl	It looks as if the Fianna Failers will be Dancing again tonight. The first counts are in. Despite all the problems with the country’s health, Soaring gang crime, broken-down schools and classes Too large for learning, as well as revelations Of corruption in the highest places, even unanswered Questions by the Taoiseach about money given Furtively, these people have probably been returned With an increased majority. How can this be? There must be something wrong with a so-called Democratic society that allows this to happen. They say That a people gets the government it deserves, and so We must deserve this. Why worry about crime when It so obviously pays? Besides, it’s useful to have someone Up there with easy morals, who is amenable To a brown envelope slipped casually into a pocket the way a note The way a note might be into a Confirmation child’s hand, followed By a quiet word in the ear. Why worry about health, when You can afford to see your doctor privately yourself? And as for a pension, well, a few years gossiping in the Dail Will see to that. Best of all, why worry about education? Look where you have got without it, to the highest Offices in the land. Better not to overburden the poor And underprivileged with too much learning, or teach them How to think, or they might wonder how people like you Got to lord it over them in your state-driven cars. Better Not to teach them about the principles of good government, In case they might get ideas above their station and begin To think they might be able to make a difference To society. They will be far happier spending study time Filling supermarket shelves for undiscerning consumers, Who imagine that bright packets equate to wonderful lives, Even if there is nothing useful inside. So, isn’t it great, No gunfire rattling on the streets of Dublin tonight? Only the mute Acceptance that democracy has worked once more. Why bother with messy dictatorships, when the people Are only too happy to imprison themselves?
28 May 2007
MWC Bubbles. Wales, UK	Walnut shackles to hide amongst, Lay down inside the flaky core Make a prison soft or hard. Who has the nutcracker? I'm safe here, safe here, safe. No worm am I. I soar against the sky, peacock feathers falling to dip and drip with green, crashing to a shuddered halt. Dashing turquoise against the knuckled hand which grips the bars of iron eyes. Ascending through the empty sky I die in sprays of salted tears each day to rise again, to fly again, and lay my breast with quiet raging breathlessness upon the stones of home.
21 May 2007
MWC: Leigh, USA	Narrow gravel glitters, you step cautious, look neither right nor left, and never, ever, look down, look d o w n, earth falls away........ away, on either hand, shrinking to a vista in green miniature. Sheer, the wind's shear, too- will woo your senses, grab equilibrium and dance the twist. You should not be at level with the eagle. It is not right, to catch the amber eye. Your voice, a comedy, a shrinking cry, consumed at once by voracious gale. He does not hear- your plea, you must go back, to sanity, can go no further, here. It hurts to have the heavens in your eyes. Hollow cyan settles in your soul, now- refuge far behind, or far before. point of no return upon the dam, a mite upon the giant concrete shoulder.
3 June 2007
MWC: fordy: NZ	... to shoulder we sat outside a café in Akaroa warm in the low-sky-sun twenty years to the day since we embraced these shores expectant, as the gulls watching from the pier. A far cry from an Anglo new-town's concrete sharpness to a green hilled harbour with Gallic sounds; Rue Jolie is where we walked today to sit outside a café in Akaroa. A child ran dad in hand across the foreshore laughing for his mother and I wondered at the dreams we chased that brought us to this place to sit outside a café in Akaroa Globe of time burst by pinprick light reflections on the water make me wonder will we remember the first of June, the winter sun, the day we sat outside a café in Akaroa?
MWC. Bubbles, UK.	Torn from you that first of June I trod an alien shoreline. Flint, dying pink, ashes of roses and grey. Ragged glints and scraggy, rasping answers. Soles and soul trudging alone, spectres in the howling gale. Loud, the empty wind replied, soft inside the burrows lay the leverets, the newborn mice, and I, with upturned face embraced once more Northern Winds and the empty sky. The navy ocean ever flows in bothering rolls, South and West, Sunday best doilies held aloft upon their crests. Onwards past the tumbled house now engulfed with thorny vice by red barbed, healing bramble. Rough hewn walls still cradle a fireplace long gone cold. Where are the words, both soft and sharp, spoken at that hearth, the meaty stews, the rising golden loaves, baked within that oven? The lovers looks and brand new lives, I turn my eyes skywards to search them.
9 June 2007
Gyppo: MWC: UK	I turn my eyes skywards to search for them, those dreams of a lifetime ago. When we lay side-by-side on the springy grass looking into the endless blue skies of childhood. When everything was simple and all things seemed possible. The days before Life came crashing in like a runaway train, sweeping us apart. The days when we climbed and ran, fished and semi-swam, went courting Lasses and sometimes fell out over the most petty of things. Different callings eased us apart, a different woman stole each heart, and though we rarely saw each other we still were friends, we thought forever. But now Old Friend you're gone forever escaping from a pain you couldn't share. But perhaps, on that hilltop, you gazed at the sky and, once again all was simple, and nothing seemed possible.
20 June 2007
MWC: Lin: The Netherlands	A long time ago I look toward the sky I sailed a cargo ship across oceans When nothing had seemed possible to me I thought about the waves and the clouds I chased dolphins through royal blue waters. The call of the Tern and the Red Tail Tropic Bird, The rising and spouting whale, all seemed surreal. As a child I wished I could travel I longed to leave my home and see life On the other side of the world. I told myself nothing is impossible How? Where? When? all daunting words In a dancing world of work and boyfriends At Twenty one I made an important phone call "Can you help me? I want to see the world" "Of course you can, hop on board" And a whole new life came to me Singapore, Japan, Africa and The World Of Nature. A happy world where life Is carefree and absolutely breathtaking I yelled out" Yes, they need me to take care of it" I sailed my ship across the blue waters I experienced the storms and hurricanes And then with time I noticed a quietness The flying fish had lost their will to fly The whales had spouted no more The birds seemed less and nature was dying Why had the whales gone? Conservation was a hippy word. no-one, it seemed Except David Attenborough cared. It was something we watched on TV The Adventures of Hans and Lottie Haas I stopped eating Danish Bacon I campaigned wherever I could Then I found others who were like minded And we joined forces, together we stood ground The only thing that keeps us alive Nature! Without it we cannot survive We rely so much on each other But we are in denial of the only Important survival strategy in the world The birds and the bees and the flowers The snails, the amoeba you cannot see. Forget the fighting amongst each other YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!! The reason you survive is The food chain that surrounds you The daylight and night time The sun and the moon And all things natural. Ill be dead soon, well in about thirty years What do I care for the future? Nothing really, but I do I suppose. Its a longing to keep this beautiful World of animals and plants alive For the sake of my children and I suspect At heart, so does everyone else. So why is it that Salman Rushdie Is so important today? The Queen Has no right to hold an embassy party For her birthday? And Iraq is still killing The already dead feelings of her people Stop you raging mulitiudes and think Help me to help you survive the fight for nature. Without it you are dead too.
22 June 2007
MWC:Allie:Irl	Another small death ended this morning when My daughter popped up briefly to say hello, While I was on gmail; she was on her way To a training day, of filming, in that city Across the water. The orange square made A gentle glow, like her real presence, and the smiley Emoticon brought her curved lips to my mind. I thought: How lucky I am. I thought of stories I've heard of other days, And of American wakes, as they were called: Where whole families gathered together To say goodbye to loved ones who were Travelling to far countries, to go into service In big houses, or turn hands more used to feeding Chickens to strange tasks in factories across the sea. How hard it must have been for mothers On such dread evenings; the low roof, with tall cousins Stooping to enter; the muted undertones; the family’s Suddenly filling eyes. Already in these last days The mother would have been scooping up Last pictures of her daughter smiling at a brother’s Teasing, or with her head bent over a local newspaper, Hair richly brown in the lamplight; or of her Simply drawn childlike face wondrous with sleep. And now the inevitable moment has come As once it came before, when at the end Of nine long months of wondering she first Glimpsed her daughter. Now it’s time to say Goodbye, in a moment that must be borne, and yet All the spirit cries out against this final tearing away Of the cord. Later, longed-for letters or unaccountable Silences will fill the gap between them. But that was long ago. For me there is no such gap: How lucky I am.
25 June 2007
Gyppo: MWC: UK	How lucky I am to have this simple gift , this knack of arranging twenty six letters in patterns which make people think, and often smile. I work at it as all good tradesmen do but the basic patterns come from some inner place I can't deny, as if I would. I can shape and direct, even dissect, and when in doubt I'll shut the world out and hide behind pen or keyboard, 'til I'm strong again. I watch, I listen, I sniff the air, and fill the pool where dreams are dreamed and words spill like a waterfall, which can't be stemmed. I tell my tales and weave my web, I'm passing through and cannot stay, but I still find time to smile and think, "How lucky I am."
Saturnine: MWC: UK	he's just passing through... (this morning I rediscovered the remnants of his last project) he cannot stay (a reel, some stolen photos, a storyboard in rough plastic casing) does he watch and listen? (my brother said, 'take these, he'd want you to have them') shape and direct? (inhale, relax- and think: how lucky I am) that's what he would have wanted.
MWC: Lin: The Netherlands	I want to be buried underneath Cloud 9 Ive lived under it all my life And in death nothing much will change Only me, cold in the ground, no sound, Just me and Cloud 9
27 June 2007
MWC: Terrasque : USA	It is only human to want what you don't need, And to need whatever it is you'd rather not have, Wouldn't care to have, or have forgotten entirely. Sometimes it's what you shouldn't have, But wanting controls when you listen to your heart. Situations arise, leaving you vulnerable. It is only human, to protect yourself....
30 June 2007
MWC: fordy: NZ	Some weeks fall ... like a rumble of rocks cascading over the coast road up Waipapa way. You can get stuck for days in a fall like that waiting on a belching yellow bulldozer a road gang and six supervisors to shift half a mountain into the sea. Ferry left Picton yesterday missed the boat so what's the rush may as well sit it out bed in the cab and some gen Y bozo on FM bored to tears. This week's like that rocks everywhere writing buried like a road to a boat that has long sailed stuck in a truck of tedium bored to tears playing with the words waiting for the block to shift the writing road to clear kick her up a gear word sentence paragraph chapter hum of the engine on the winding writing road.
MWC: fordy: NZ	It's a 'clear as a bell' day: mountains sharp on blue washed sky not like yesterday when murky rain drizzled outside our door while we hid by the fire. Yesterday, today each side of average (whatever that is) and on the 'up' side we went to the library you on your bike your yellow dazzler (like the sun) and the old man stopped to admire and saw it there on the handlebar - long time since I seen a bell on a bike but your youthful confusion didn't understand that bells were mandatory in his day: a warning bell to clear the way that's why it's a 'clear as a bell' day.
5 July 2007
MCW:SianLane:USA	If you listen, pay it close ear - well. If the words could penetrate that stubborn stain, the truth then, our day had been, not one as clear as a bell, but something other. Less seemly, my dear. Polite in repost, the gathering heard. And not the thunder that hamered my brain, loud enough inside, to rattle my teeth, yet soft, oh yes, wiley, underhanded, but clanging, clanging 'take me in your arms' my dear.
MWC: Lin: The Netherlands	Take me in your arms said The Old Man of the Forest You have destroyed my home Planted unwanted trees And killed my mother. My arm is gammy because You tied me up Take me in your arms Love me and care for me I did nothing wrong Your human ways are Killing my soul to the end Of extinction. Save me Please save me.
MWC:Allie:Ireland	She liked to save things for a rainy day: Gifts that she had been given, linen Tablecloths, sets of gold-rimmed china, She put them all away Towards some golden future time. There were off-cuts strewn across The purple carpet's rich pile, So no one would walk on it and spoil Its newness. Even the cream three-piece Suite she covered with cellophane, And sat admiring it from her hard kitchen chair. It rained on the day of her funeral. The offcuts were removed so no one would trip Over them. The relatives sat around on the sofa, And chairs, enjoying the strange feel Of their uncrackling softness, and the china Sat on the mahogany table, its gold rims gleaming In what seemed like an ironic grin As it caught the chandelier's knowing light.
6 July 2007
MWC: Veronica: Holland	I would love to have light So that I can see Tears are coming but there is nothing But flashes of brightness. To be able to read Would dispel my fears. To feel something And to smell gives hope Knowing who is near, But nothing will bring back What is lost
8 July 2007
MWC:writersart:USA	Who is near Enough to read these words Is more than yesterday, Closer they are to Seeing this attempt To flash some light Upon my life and words. What is it worth To invite you Into my universe? Welcome, All who read, Who curse or cheer, Who add their thoughts And send this poem flying Into the future. The circle grows in Ever widening ripples.
MCW: Sian Lane: USA	This poem, perchance, whose circle grows -may at last, deliver me some wild portent, or perhaps a stronger verse. A Phoenix among the wilted words of so much weary prose. Rising, wing-ed and mighty, where many have lain down, abject superficial glossy colored only at the outside edges of their feathers. Plucked clean, laid bare, dying and dead. Yet the decomposing carcasses - shed the fecund egg from which my poetic Phoenix can swell radiate out – and away – in concentric, widening rings of life. Take the burden of perpetual obscurity from aching tongues and typed out fingers, and launch – great wings unfurled – me into notoriety. Spiral my sad and skeletal wallet in ever increasing figures, of fame and fortune and make this poem my litany, a mantra if you will announce intent, manifest the wild desire to see the magic words that this poem, this very verse – at last – might deliver me.
9 July 2007
Bubbles. MWC. Wales, UK.	Our poetry and verse bind us, and because we are the same, at the end of all this, we'll meld together. Particles of my particles will be whisked with yours, and baked in the last searing sunset. Earth biscuit, the last in the barrel. And nuances of your nuances will make up my make-up. I'll have your smile, you'll get my freckles. This poem will become the road we slipped down, thumped along, pretended we were talking on. Great winds will lift our inconsistencies, together with our bodies, throwing them into voids we lovingly made and kept in reserve. 'Just in case the others come, those foreign ones.' Shooshing silvered sobbing of discarded words unacted on, ideas left at styles, prostrated, mossed, too heavy to carry over will be our lethargic legacy.
MWC. writersart. USA	Our lethargic lives Second handed into the forum Of anonymous strangers. We're distant so far yet so near To breaking the ice of wilful discontent. Wishes, dropped into the well, Concentric circles ripple, Tell of the need to charm, enfold, Draw the poem keepers into Orbit. Who weeps when the Words flail, sink, drown? Yet we will prevail for we Are not content to go silently Into obscurity. Why has rhyme become an epithet? Willy Shakespeare wrote charmingly, trippingly in measured pairs-- Why not we?
10 July 2007
MWC: Leigh, USA	Scattered rhyming fragments- hapazard calico, bits of shining mica, shimmering mother of pearl. Turqoise true, warm topaz, among the common shale. Pick at crumbling edges, smooth a corner grim, work and scrabble, puzzling this variant mosaic. Before the shapes come, peeking between the mortar's grip, the artist must be trusting, the artist must be quick.
MWC Bubbles Wales, UK	Quick, quick you wordy ones say it now, get it done for we are always ready. We must be always ready to say the goodly badly inbetweenly awful thankless glad to be here look what I've seen here recounting jousting I'll cheer you up or augment the tears words. And sometimes a Tuesday morning 'should not have been here' can't help but spring out from our mouths.
Gyppo: MWC: UK	'Should not have been here', don't belong in this century or any other if the truth be told. But I'm here despite the odds and I'm not going away yet. I'll paddle my own canoe, against the current as likely as not. Riding the dancing rapids of imagination, through the leaping quicksilver shallows, dodging the sharp rocks of reality then gliding across the cool depths of serenity. Defiantly 'mooning', waving my arse at Shakespeare's 'outrageous fortune'. Slipping past obstacles like a fish in water, my casual ease hiding the scars of the times I've grounded and nearly sunk. I really shouldn't be here, but I bloody well am!
MWC: Lin: Holland	It shouldn't be here! The rain Oh! the damned rain! Yesterday it killed my flowers Laid a white carpet of ice on the lawn As new fallen snow. It's July. Thumping on my roof, La Nina has struck. Little sister or not she is powerful Fighting her fiesty way Around the blue world. Floods and strange lightening She speaks her mind She is troubled Her ferocity is temporary Until El Nino returns Are we prepared?
MWC Bubbles, Wales, UK.	Be prepared, dib dib, and knock knees, windy tents, khaki'd boys. Girls in navy, Arcala's bosoms, badges, campfires, mouldy village halls. Uneven stiches on your badges for cooking or perhaps cyling proficiency. Bright white sparklers, jumping jacks, combined Guy Fawkes nights with the boys. Bakathons and sitting in circles, blushing cheeks, talking loud. Carols and snowflakes, marching at Easter I wish, I wish I remembered it all.
MWC. writersart. USA	I remembered last night That I missed him. Past tense is wrong. The missing goes on. People I've never met Leave holes in my life When they die or fade from View. How strange this is To miss someone I've never touched Although I have been touched by A voice, a face, a performance, An art (or even an artifice). Fan girl am I. Someone writes of him, Of his grace and kindness, Someone else who may not have known him Just as I never knew his thoughts or hopes or wishes. Rumors, reports, reviews of movies, gossip, Images on dvd, words on the 'net, The wave energy of his voice haunts Years past his passing For the innocent to discover, To remind me of gain and loss, To make me yearn once more. I slip around the surface of his existence, Seeing me in the mirror of my preferences. Performers are narcissistic I've surmised. So, too, am I. I kneel at the altar of technology.
Gyppo: MWC: UK	Performers are narcissistic, but only in public. Strutting their stuff and feeding on audience energy. Riding high on approval, challenge, nostalgia, or that special pair of eyes sat three rows back. There's always someone three rows back, someone who understands. An old performer or some young wanna-be who relishes every nuance of your performance. To some you're a mere soundtrack, a backdrop to their drinking, eating, or courting. And some, like psychic vampires, suck the soul from the unguarded young performer giving his all. Some come backstage to shake your hand, some to ask the wanna-be questions, some just to bask in the performer's aura and some to make outrageous offers. And then, suddenly, it's over. The buzz fades and the persona collapses, falling back inside the ordinary person, who will carry it to the next performance
11 July 2007
MWC Bubbles, Wales, UK.	Perform push out along greased walls encumbered by your violet rope. Perform with angeled sleeping eyes and windy random smiles. Perform by rote, by examination, by gift, by luck, by life. Perform with your beauty and get chosen though no one mentions this. Perform to grab the one in thirty, for the money, for the shot. Then perform the circuitous onerous duty to give another soul the chance. To perform.
14 July 2007
MWC: fordy: NZ	Blobs of colour dart in winter sun yellow, red across the green feet run foot to ball in breathless anticipation of the goal. And over all, the mountains dressed in winter's coat watch from afar ancient touchline parents beaming in the sun well done James! well done!
MWC: Lin: The Netherlands	A job well done, completed Spent hours changing words, Checking facts, making calls, That was the easy part! Now research. Send out the mail Wait for rejection, anticipate An answer. Try again. All of God's waking hours Are spent with typing. Broken finger nails, no exercise Sitting, sitting, waiting for response. Writing is expression and kindly, Rejection is a brick in your soul. Try again and again Keep the flow continuous Enthuse yourself, lest you fall By the wayside and never write again.