Evergreen into Ivory White Poems by Julia Webster


Tread Softly

      
      Tread softly for the night is but
      a prelude to the day
      And all that lives must die
      For thus it is as we've heard say
      So many times before.
      Before? the end of the beginning
      Which itself is only spinning to Infinity
      Divinity is but a name for good thought
      Transferred into deeds
      Where one man counts the cost
      The other's praying for his needs
      Stop!..A thought
      Listen!...A bird is singing somewhere
                                             in the Universe.
      Poor thoughts, poor empty thoughts.
      How can I say ' I love you?'
      What's in a word?
      Just frailty.

      One, two ,three, four, five ,six ,seven
      All good people go to Heaven
      But I think otherwise and I'd advise that 
      You do too
      Wouldn't you advise someone that
      Hell's by far a better place
      And that a misplaced feeling of                      disgrace is relatively unimportant
      Oughtn't one to think so?
      No I suppose you wouldn't, couldn't
      I like to think a little differently
      Not follow in the crowd , eh?
      Tread softly, you may say,
      Have it your way.


       A devil, black and smoky,
       Breathing fumes of concentrated                   orange juice through cold-pudding                 nostrils
       What's wrong with that?
       Don't tell me you don't like him
       None of that!
       I suppose you'd paint a better?
       Fetter him in garlic, would you
       Could you?    

        Tread softly 
        For the night has come and dying is
        Out of tune
        And all the people on the earth are                Gazing at the moon
        For soon her light will out
        And shouts of anguish then will spill
        the air
        And everywhere will be a place too                small
        And anywhere will be the devil's fool
        And stars will burst and thirst
        for more good deeds to fill up History
        And soft bright eyes will dim
        And then the earth will lose its spin
        And fighting chaos raging for a                                                                          decade
         Will streak the skies with noble deeds
         And stars will burst and thirst for                   More good deeds to fill up History
         And then....only Time
         Not space but Time
         Running, walking ,speeding
         Slowing ,
         Straight, bent, Lent.
         Time without space
         And nothing more.

          A drop of sun upon a leaf
          Warm rays spraying silver on the seas
          A fan of light beating colours into                  flowers
          And hours upon hours upon hours..
          Tread softly....tread softly...    
         


Flight of the Dove
            
            The tree stands in the lonely field.
            It is raining in sleep- filled rivers.
            Do not hate, do not love.

            beyond hope or caring, sleep or                      sloth
            Dreams deride the thing which is
            Whole world's subside and we,
            Who think we know what suffering                                                                         is
            Cannot abide the murmuring of the                                                              dove.
            We who do not hate, we who do not                                                                     love.
            For us the barren fields are soaked
                                                            in  blood.
            Send up the cry!   God is dead!
            Only beware the fleeing of the dove.

            Have you seen her?
            Flashing blue across the river?
            Did you call out to her?
            Splash of film over the river.
            Catching sight of her wings of taut                                                                   gold
            Did your heart of a sudden grow                                                                             old?
            As she sliced the sun into pale-                                                  white ivory stalks
            By the water's edge, disrupting the
                                            moor-hen's song,
            Belong, belong! belong, Belong!

             
            But what are you doing here,old                                                                     man
            Fouling the greenways?
            Mouth of pomegranate, stench of 
                                     tears gone sour,
            How could you have tasted the                      Forbidden fruit
            At this ungodlike hour?
            You were cast in too strange a                                                                 mould
            A million years of shadow have                      Trespassed behind your eyes
            How could you taste the light
                                              of your eyes?
             Rains you heed not, nor the                                                           wind's outrage,
              But poach at ease beside the                                                  blood-lit streams
             Not hating, not loving
             But tell me, what will you do
             When she comes, robed in mist?
             At the first hint of dawn,
             Will you see her, even in                                                                  dreams?
             Will you stay silent as she drops
             To her pale death in the foam
             Jagged rock of white mist,                               Plummeting down through
             the air's crystal streams
             Lost to the sunrise
             Staining the day with new gold
             As the sun's rivers melt her                                                                      through
             Will she touch you?
             You who are so old?
             Will you reach out to feel that                         Warm rush of feathers
             Blue-green-scarlet-gold?
             Or are you too old, too old?
             As the waters reflect back her                                                 causeless song
             Will you trace those pyramids of 
                                                                light
             Treading sapphire rings
                                                  into the mud?
    
         

Ode to a Drug Addict
         
       
        The great scape of Heaven

       Is tortured with images of Death
   
       And the night sky.


       Owls swoop in the twilight world 

       Where Keats went mad

       For Beauty 's treacherous eye. 


       Ode to a fool 

       Transfixed by the painting 

       Of some great pig of a man

       Eating a fly.


       Tempestuous nights and dawns of 

        Eclipses 

        Fighting the otherwhere and the

        Why.

        I

        Screech at you from the rooftops 

        Over the bridge,  driven wild

        Inside my head


        Hammer the bed into white sheets

        Grasp cold on 

        Nothing

        Outstare the stars to white lead. 


       And running,

       Hand you the piece of dust 

       From which I fled. 
    


       Evergreen into Ivory white



Evergreen into ivory white
The curlew calls
The morbid manufacturers of day
Attend the passing funeral
Of those who decay
Slowly with time.
The bird rustles in the hedgerow
Hear its mating call
At close of day
the flight of swallows return
No matter where.

The passing shepherd summons the sheepdog
The daffodils burst out in gold
My lover's out there in the cold

The short mist comes
The gap between heaven and earth
And all obscurity
No greater love than this
Will
You
Grant
Me
A
Short
Space 
For
Breath

The galleon ship enshrouded in mist
White walls surround the drowned sailor
Shipwrecked
In white water
On the turf of dreams

The bird flying calls 
The seamen look up 
It is not a white albatross
It is I turning about
Into this white pool
The shoreline crinkles into powder
Tiny and remote
Flying high, the day recedes
Into this ivory-white 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Julia Webster studied English & Drama at Exeter University then later studied Integrated Health Sciences at Westminster. Her first play written in 1972 entitled “The Object of the Game” was performed at The Little Theatre, Barbican , Plymouth and was likened by the well known Harvey Crane critic of the South West to works by Pinter and Ionesco. She began writing puppet plays for children and performed at various Albion fairs throughout the U.K. and was selected to attend The Children’s Festival in Austria by Arabella Churchill. She also wrote poetry since her teens and has composed many songs for voice guitar, violin and piano accompaniment which have been performed in various venues across the U.K. and also in India. In 1979 she met her teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rimpoche and has been a student of his and Dzogchen teachings since then. She currently lives in West London with her family and teaches piano and also practices cranio sacral therapy.

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Teetering Toward Sattva & Further Poems by Kalpita Pathak

Teetering Toward Sattva

My friend’s mother would tell him, I created 
you and I can destroy you, as though, like Parvati
with Ganesh, she had literally made him
from a mixture of earth and her perspiration, brought
him to life with her breath. Śaivasampradāyaḥ believe 
Shiva is the creator, preserver, and destroyer
of the cosmos. Does that mean mothers

are his avatāra and children their miniature
multiverses? I wouldn’t know. I’m not a mother. Mine
may have been a god to me when I was little
(it’s likely she was) but I remember her 
as my universe. One I destroyed over and over
with the choices I made, huddled and weeping
and bereft, my days-old sweat a blend of scotch

and cigarettes and dirt from the alleys where I
crouched for decades. Now those years have passed
and so has she. Neither creator nor destroyer,
she preserved her dreams for/in me and I live them 
with her hands, callused, dry-darkened
at the knuckles, soft, cool. They wash away the grime
so I can live for today. So I can live for us both. 
So I can live.


Anteyesti
to Anay


Your body burns
as your mother weeps
her son into a letter.
I read it, edges 
fluttering in the summer 
wind like wings, like the ashes 
we scatter
in the canyon’s river. She asks
why you wanted to melt
into memory, fleeting 
desert snow beneath
the sun of our hot grief.
And in that brutal 
light, she begs 
for rain to swoop down
and flood her cracked earth.


(… As We Know It)
  Reset: Kritayuga Begins Again


When the apocalypse
comes what becomes
of the astronaut who floats
in the space station and sees
the sun as it really is – a silvery
white flare, incandescent
as fireworks arching over
our greening blue Earth? 

Kalpita Pathak is an autistic poet, novelist, and advocate with a passion for research and sensory-rich details. Her work tends to explore the perseverance of hope in a sometimes despairing world, with a little dark humor and magic added to the mix. She received the James Michener Fellowship for her MFA in creative writing and has taught at both the college level and in school programs for kids from three to eighteen. She has recently been published in Mediterranean Poetry.  

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Mini Poems from Bekah Steimel

Sheep Dreams

My sheep stumble down the plank
  and jump ship
crashing into waters whisking with every shark
that ever detected the drunken cologne
  of my blood

PLACE SETTING

Where you live when you are not where you are living, and by living, I mean residing.  
And by live, I’m referencing the space constructed of memory and curiosity.  And by curiosity, 
I speak of the galaxy where dead wishes can’t be piled like bodies. They float seamlessly, 
snag your eyes with a twinkle of a wink. A location as unattainable as those aspirations you 
gifted pulse and game plan. Then suffocated, ripped to portions, and ingested slowly. Well, shit.

The setting of a play, a place, the actors are not all actors, you are writer, director, knowing 
it will never be produced.

       FIN

Ghosted

I ghosted myself
or am I a ghost to myself?
Haunting my leftovers, haunted by what
I left over in a geography
without space or proof.

Hushing Heroes

I’ve been reading my heroes wrong
I’ve been reading my heroes bedtime stories
A collection of heroes 
is a herd of one’s own insecurities
I’m rocking both to sleep  

bekahsteimel
 

Bekah Steimel is an internationally published poetic person who was “mostly dead, slightly alive” on VV ECMO life support in 2019 from double lung failure (get your flu shot! And, COVID vaccine as well!). An artist reporting back from the other side. Developing Chance Books LLC. She can be found online at bekahsteimel.com and followed @BekahSteimel.

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The Rain-Wet Rats. More Poems from RW.Haynes

1]
The Rain-Wet Rats
 
She bathed in cold fire which softly sterilized
Her fitful thoughts circling constantly
Back to what gets lost, what set free, 
Gently startled, but not at all surprised.
The cold front rattles in with peevish rain
Concealed by darkness in the morning chill
But nudging at the mind as hostile specters will,
Cold drops rattling like a fatal chain.
 
Can she be easy regulating the fates
Of two dozen dirty peasants with staring eyes
And rusty pitchforks, furious at lies,
Shrieking in the rain outside her gates?
 
Is risk or safety the best choice to make?
The rain outside keeps rattling like a snake.
 
The rafters of civilization broke that day,
And all the rain-wet rats nimbly raced
Away like greyhounds, all order displaced,
And she ducked aside to hide out of the way.
Thunder crashed, as it were, and she
Smiled secretly and thought of my face
Aping consternation ludicrously.
 
2]
Symbolist Gunslinger Purges His Vocabulary
 
Lovely ladies, decked with smiles and flowers,
Dissolve all war and ugliness generously,
Gently repudiating suspicion, hostility,
Disarming all the cowboys’ macho powers.
Let sunshine warm where desert heat once dried.
Let kindness soothe the pain of outraged minds
And cool the excessive heat that burns and blinds.
Let understanding leave rough men satisfied.
For this is a magic, a witchcraft you yield,
Medea, Medusa, Miranda, Antigone,
Criseyde, Duessa, at times ferociously,
And Judith, and the fair witch I once met
Upon the meads, whose ring I wear within
My blood-curdled heart, and will wear when
Chariots descend to collect my fatal debt.
Lovely ladies, let the world spin away
Its grief, let conflict fire our blessed sunlight,
Let the right simplicity be ours today,
And the right words bless our witless dreams tonight.
 
3]
Jukebox Catullus Hums and Strums
 
I can’t stop playing Banquo’s ghost,
And blood runs everywhere each time I twitch,
And somewhere my corpse is bleeding in a ditch,
And you’re still indifferent to who loves you most
Despite this commitment, this dramatic dedication
Here on these boards where happy endings hide
From murdered noblemen with broken hearts inside
And no luck in erotic conversation.
May I venture an aside, though I should leave the stage?
Let no ghost be dishonored, or his staring eyes
Will plunder your heart in midnight surprise.
Enough.  The mad Queen calms the murderer’s rage.
The curtain never falls for the players in this trade;
We wait to spring the traps the poet made.
 
4]
The Right Reply for Second-Hand Fear
“Now time’s Andromeda on this rock rude…”
			--Hopkins
 
A delicate matter prevented her revenge:
Madame Alving was, at that time, at least,
(Delicious pause) Andromeda waiting for the beast,
Long-legged bait a gate to unhinge,
A passage of a champion of the stage,
Sic semper tyrannis the cry of the day,
Cooing doves flapping wings to fly away,
And the old monster’s dilapidated rage,
Bursts forth though in need of upholstery,
Roaring his regrettably wheezy roar
To remind us what monsters are onstage for,
And everyone fake-quakes, all but she,
For she smiles somewhat palely with that fire in her eyes,
And waves a hand defensively without fear,
For she knows who and what is scary here
And what is God’s truth and what the Devil’s lies.
That steady fire grows, its intensity stays,
However much your maudlin monster weighs.

 

 
R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press).

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