Page Title

Ameena

Coiled cobra-curl

Poised, odium face

Swollen with rage, slavering

Tongue protrudes, forbidden fang

Feasts, treacle-lined

Spittle in missile-like launch

Fireball spatter on her niqab

Transfixed beauty, she inhales

His poison Fixated

Guantanamo taunts of 'Ninja Turtle'

Wreathe of his mirth meanders,

Squanders, smashes

This montage of multi cultural

Community. Onlookers

Absorb the debacle

Chagrin flickers, complacency

Steers, as we saunter through

Chic civilisation, city of

The gods, political exploitation

An oil coated veil of pigmentation,

Power, puce-tinted

Judged by the men drunk on

The merriment of multicultural mutiny

Catherine Mark

It's still a sin to kill a mockingbird

They claim to be brave

These men of iron and coal

Asserting that self-acclaimed

Prophecy of supremacy

This generation of whites buttered

By the folly of their forefather's conspiracy

An insecurity that led to their self-confinement

They captured bone, sculpted sinew

A lineage of bondage woven

On the barter of tea, silk and guns

A human story translated into

Starched white hoods,

Cutty Sark victors and victims

All part of the human embargo

Today the lyrics of these

Translucent gnomes are little changed

"We recognize the sins of our ancestors"

They say as they sway to the clank-rap

Of chains around their necks

The tirade of token efforts to

Concede to a history that remains

Our whirlpool of truth

The scorn lingers as charcoal

Mars the landscape

Like sweeping surf swells

Of self-promoting guises

On behalf of the master's vices

The schools, the offices - society

This sting like the piss they offered us as water

We choke on a legacy of ashes

Ground by sweat and mortar

Catherine Mark

Séance

I come alive through the moisture

that escapes her firm, taut lips

That me that was. The I that no longer

Is A shadow hidden behind

heavy eyelids. Lifeless.

As if weighed down with the intoxication

Of cocaine. I travel through her swollen

veins, her berth enlarged with the appeal

Of lard. She gives me voice

A shape, like fingertips reaching out

From the void touching the laugh lines of

This worldly plane - embodied in the form

Of my husband sitting side by side

With our only child.

Catherine Mark

Shalom

Hush she sleeps

like the silence of the horizon

on a warm July morn.

A figure in the haze - not flesh, or no longer flesh,

and not just effervescence on languid vale

or blossom petals floating in the breeze

but death, neither blessing

nor curse, like the blood in our veins

a gift veiled in secret abyss, the pane

of glass and ash, chimes that final farewell.

Catherine Mark

Homeless man

Pale faced, lithe, slight-stoop; thirty-six years on his shoulders

this solitary man form, traipses over a seamless covering of leaves

tightly quilted on uneven pavement of Vicarage Road. Six o'clock.

Autumn's dawn still to arrive. Dog in tow. Splattering of black

and honey brown Yorkshire terrier dances around weary feet

swathed in worn leather boots claimed from a heap of rubble

patched with a tale or two. He is laden with soiled marigold blanket,

khaki-coloured bag swung on his back. Clutching a guitar across his

chest. Silence on his lips, a glass gaze fixated on his face; an

occasional side glance at the dog, dutiful. Twenty-five minutes

later they arrive their destination. Sainsbury's, their daytime abode

with the meticulousness of a clock, he spreads his things -

out of his bag: a flask, yesterdays' Birmingham's Post, bread

which he places in a tin bowl for his companion. Pours a drink,

indulges in a steaming sip; and begins to play a stream of Beatle tunes:

Love me do, Hey Jude and Let it be. Eight o'clock. Humanity begins to

buzz the streets like flies. Man in tweed suit, old woman doubled-over

with age and weight, Asian woman pushing a pram envelopes

a sleeping child. Youth bristling at the height of the school day

their chatter like a cackle of animated geese, in the foreground.

He remains noticed, yet unseen. He has become part of the

timeless collage of the everyday. Even his music has become

part of the opus.

Catherine Mark