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GEOFF STEVENS

Geoff Stevens was formerly an Industrial Chemist. He has been Editor of Purple Patch poetry magazine since 1976. He runs two poetry venues monthly, and has hosted four national small press poetry conventions. His latest book is The Phrenology of Anaglypta from Bluechrome.

WELCOMESVILLE

Battered red raw with the cold
beaten and tattered by the wind
the neon sign bleeds its blood
into a rare roast-beef sky
winks Cafe with a nervous tick
the uncertainty of electrical connection.
It mouths to unidentified objects
and receives light signals back
from things that cross the sky.
Beneath the sizzling sign
chromium hisses steam
a fly buzzes in an empty display case
and a little green man sits on a high stool
reading a book on cordon bleu cooking.
Cars pass-by rapidly on the darkened by-pass
like asteroids racing around a lonely planet
in the universal backwaters of existence.


LOVERS by BERNARD MEADOWS

Lovers is brassiness entwined
a pelvic tuning-fork that strikes the right note
knockers that open a door to permissiveness
It is a depleted pawnbroker's sign of maleness
imparting a bloom of vigour to the proceedings
is a bronzed couple cast in the same mould
is time spent rubbing molecules together
the polishing of sexual etiquette
until it shines with satisfaction
two people on their metal to behave as one
an inseperable alloy of desire


SCHWANENGESANG

Given curly black receeding hair
and full sideburns
Schubert
resurrected by Klimt
sits at the piano
as friends sing Der Shone Mullerin
and a lone soprano trips her way
through Standchen
while the sparse moth-light candleflames
select the colours of the women's dresses
for pin-prick breakdown analysis
the precious reflections of their jewellery
for a prismatic diffusion of fireflies
that glistens in the black satin darkness
of a retrieved time
in which sound travels more quickly than light

I HAVE TASTED ELECTRICITY

tongue on the battery
taste of the forbidden
tingle of excitement

taste of electricity

HUSH PUPPY

showing amber now
bruised suede
the sky steps down
upon the oil-shaled land
walks lightly on the crepe-grey sea
but soon its summer storm
will troop across Slyne Head
stamp its heels
in the Connemara mud

I am living in the wallpaper;

it is as full of sqiggles as an Arab mosque.

It's a Chelsea Flower Show,

an undergrowth of ferns,

a Mickey Mouse of nursery shapes,

a riot of colours and shades.

It is as cool as candy stripe,

as chunky as cable stitch,

hairy as a 'floc' of sheep,

as shizophrenic as a mood change,

as abstract as concentration failure,

as intense as studying,

as specialised as an eye-balling.

Why am I living in the wallpaper?

I am living in the wallpaper because

the room has been shrinking and shrinking,

more and more, over the last few months,

so much so that the paper on the west wall

is now on the east wall

and vice versa.

I am disorientated.

Peel me off, soak and strip me,

replace me with a new pattern of life;

or at least gloss over me.

Otherwise it's D.I.Y. or die.

Absinthe on your ice-cream

you get fonder as the alcohol takes hold

more adventurous as the wormwood

wriggles in your imagination

like spermatozoon looking for perversion

a Knickerbocker Glory

with the long dipping spoon of ecstasy

scraping your smooth as glass resistance

way beyond your wafer-thin control

The air up here is stretched to disbelief,

our lungs gasping at its purity,

so we pause for cool orange juices

and cold apple strudels, at a lone house

that provides them on a small scale,

for a few schillings, not to get rich quick.

In the winter, we would not have made this walk,

as then the ski lift is operating.

But we arranged to climb last evening,

in "Der Wilder Kaiser", over lagers,

and now we watch the cattle grazing

on lush alpine pastures, sown with flowers,

the sound of cow bells tinkling like crystal.

And looking westward, in the distance,

is the mountain, its black molar throbbing

in the shimmer of noon's heat haze,

diamond snowpeak sublimating like dry ice,

scratching, intaglio, on blue-glass sky.

copyright © Geoff Stevens