New Poetry by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

a roman matron

! sisters of sabine, listen: all men
are weak when disrobed of state
(& composure. it is we, daughters
of the she-wolf, who shall bring 
him to his knees

   . come, we say
, rest that handsome nose on the 
bosom of our pillow & weep us
your insecurity: how what you 
feel is, by your own creed, not
real; that you know all empires
must die; why you are secretly 
guilt embodied for your theft of
the dead, battlefield's bowerbird
, a carrion of all culture, adjunct 
, an appropriation of everybody 
     
     . nothing you 
have is truly yours , & you have
the whole world in love with 
your roman nose

  . even we, the 
sisters of sabine, are borrowed

? your downfall: believing that 
we believe in you, are bound &
honour you true. that we are oh 
so dutiful

    ! ha, no, dear roman
fellow, we are just suckling an
opportune colosseum to bring 
you your fall

. rome wasn't built in 
a day, but it will burn to the 
ground in just one night, like 
everyman can ignite: we’ll
make you burn in more than
just one way

        . now come &
succumb & we’ll let our kin
-dling through the gates to
make night burn as day


- Scott-Patrick Mitchell 2014

Scott-Patrick Mitchell (SPM) is a performance poet and fashion blogger from Perth, Western Australia. His work appears in New Poets 1 and Performance Poets: Fremantle Poets 3, both published by Fremantle Press. At current SPM is Australian Poetry's July online poet-in-residence. For more on SPM, visit either www.scott-patrickmitchell.com or www.outrageous-adventures.com, or even check out his Facebook fanpage.

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New Poetry by Rico Craig

Suvorov Square

At night, novels stroll on gravel 
pathways; whispers and powdered 
cheeks lifting with each white 
breath. Their confessions are fur-lined, 
necessary, worn to the thread. 

Eugene tears a letter into wishes that trail 
at his feet, Pushkin follows aiming 
his quill. Anna Karenina sits with her daughter, 
picking strands in a cats-cradle; Tolstoy nibbles 
a banana and tries to ignore their laughter. 
Raskolnikov badgers his shoe laces 
thinking of the coffee house where 
Dostoyevsky waits, texting rhapsodies to his bookie. 

In the morning, their mute footsteps 
are raked over by sturdy women. Nearby,
oblivious children parse the ribs of fallen
leaves, collecting handfuls to flutter and crackle 
at the hush between each rasping scrape.


- Rico Craig 2014

Rico is a writer and creative writing teacher, currently sharing his time between poetry, prose and working on pantomime scripts with school students. Recent work has been published at Cordite and Doctor T.J Eckleburg Review, and is forthcoming in Meanjin. For links to publications please visit:  http://ricoandhisroboteye.wordpress.com 

New Poetry by Robert Halleck

ROTARY CHRISTMAS PROGRAM

They came from the

school next door.

the Thursday before 

Christmas Eve.

Boys and girls of

color in a hotel

of lily white.

Eyes wide they

gazed upwards.

White shirts

White blouses.

They sang like saints

and left silently

taking Christmas 

with them.

- Robert Halleck 2014

Robert Halleck is a retired banker living in Del Mar, California with two retired racing Greyhounds. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years and has published two volumes of his collected works. His recent poems have appeared in The Camel Saloon, The San Diego Annual Poetry Anthology, The Scapegot, The Boston Poetry Review and other publications.

Tail lights Fade

It has been quite some time since I graced the world of blog with my pickled observations, and for that I apologise dear reader. To be honest, events of both a private and public nature have overwhelmed me somewhat, but after a difficult twelve months I feel the old fire returning.

I probably don't need to point out that the world, like my garden, has got a lot less tidy in that time. Australia has morphed from something of a geo-political backwater to the sun-parched Belgium of a new Asian paradigm. The word "Caliphate" is back after lying dormant for almost 100 years, ensuring a widening rift between Sunni and Shia the world over. Israel Israel Israel, the background static of my life, like my crazy neighbour's un-tuned radio.

Need I go on?

But the great buzzword in this country at present would seem to be "fairness", an almost quaintly archaic concern with the widening gap between rich and poor in both income and opportunity. What has prompted this sudden shift from "me" to "us"? Well,  Bluepepper is yet to be convinced there has even been a shift.

The ideological position of the current Federal government should not be a surprise to anyone who has taken even a passing interest in politics over the past 20 or 30 years. They are merely the pointy end of the Thatcher/Reagan "revolution" of the 1980's, an untiring and ultimately successful effort to reverse the trend toward a more re-distributive society in favour of unfettered opportunity for the individual. That this happened to coincide with the rise of the so-called "Me" generation of cashed up boomers is no accident of history. As Thomas Piketty recently highlighted in his book, "Capital in the 21st Century", much of the "equalising" of the 20th century was the result of the dissipation of capital by two world wars and the recognition of a "shared ordeal" that propelled governments to take measures to distribute wealth and opportunity more evenly. It was, after all, that great Prussian militarist, Otto von Bismarck, who led the way by founding the first welfare state back in the 1870's, realising that by so doing he was stealing a march on the socialists. But memories fade. The "us" appears to have become a "them" versus "me".

In this "society" atomised by competition between autonomous entities, any sense of a shared identity is difficult to find. What has come to be known as "Identity Politics" has run parallel with a widening gap between the haves and the have nots, as those unable or unwilling to organise to promote their interests fall further and further behind. That racism still thrives in such a context should really be no surprise to anyone who has even the most rudimentary understanding of human nature. Either we yearn to be considered exceptional, singular, or to belong to a group that considers itself as such. Rather than accept, and revel in, our universal heritage and destiny, we seek to rise above, either individually or collectively. Empathy in such circumstances, like truth in war, would appear to be the first casualty.

I am not so blinkered as to advocate a return to the old politics and old economics of the last century, paired as they were with rampant nationalism, racism, imperialism, etc. But I am just old enough to remember a time when matters of justice and equity were at the forefront of political debate, when the economy was there to serve the people rather than the other way around. Although limited in scope by many of the "isms" alluded to previously, there was a sense of the collective good and a detestation for elites that many in this country now find risible. In its relentless pursuit of surplus value, capitalism continues to present a challenge to democracy which is, after all, nothing more and nothing less than the tyranny of the majority. Neo-liberals chafe at this definition, and in their effort to circumvent it have allowed oligarchy (the expression of minority will) in through the back door, and we have become entranced by this minority of glamour and wealth even as it robs us of our birthright.

This is where the role of the artist, and especially of the poet, is crucial. For poetry is above all the art, perhaps even the science, of empathy. The poetry of identity is not what I am talking about here. Such poetry is merely advocating tribalism by another name. It may capture the imagination of journalists for whom empathy is rarely a governing instinct, but it is not poetry as I understand it. Great poetry speaks to a universal sense of inheritance and destiny, and as such should serve as a counter-weight to the increasing influence of a wealthy and powerful minority.

In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi:

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

In other words, raise your head from the trough, dear reader, and look around.

New Poetry by Juan Pablo Duboue

Doleō

Pain is a part of me as much as writing is a part of me

Sometimes it’s bloating and unbearable,

Though at times it is quite manageable.

Migraines come and go like the jasmines in my garden.

Summer intensifies and 

Winter harbours grudges. 

Blame it on the rectified cervical lordosis

Blame it on my insomnia 

Blame it on you, on me, on them

On them, on me, on you.

Psychosomatic disorders 

you name them.

I know the Rorschach by heart 

and the inkblots dye my mind. 

Imagination’s running wild

as the oil spills on the butterflies.

Not a penguin, but a butterfly 

Not a penguin, but a butterfly.

Haunting crows circle 

my sheets, an orgy of feathers 

and cawing at midnight.

They tear my limbs apart

My intestines open 

My aorta bleeding poppies in July.

I do not see myself as fat

I am not overweight 

It’s the eating that I dread

For food makes me gag

I cannot seem to hold it.

Body rejects what mind decides is past.

Bags have transmuted from a grayish green to black 

People seem to stare at me

As if I were a terminal patient

There’s nothing terminal in me 

My conditions are chronic 

They let me rest 

They let me have my days

And then the cycle starts

Again and again and again.

An episode here and there 

When life’s good it’s every four months

Otherwise it’s every month

A cramp 

A shock

A needle stuck into my neck 

A syringe plunged into my back.

It’s dying and resurrecting every time

Every four months, lucky me.

Doctors say it’s in my mind

Shrinks say it’s in my blood 

Daddy says it’s on his family’s side

Mother says just stop the nonsense 

You’re fine.

Thank you for your insights

But the pain is still concrete

I can touch it 

I can grab it

I can chew it

Feel it twisting me

From the inside out 

A thousand claws 

Toying with my insides.

Feasting over me.

A common depersonalization,

fear of a heart attack,

a nervous breakdown.

The acute onset

cradles me to sleep.

I am one with the attack,

a sisterly feeling

of impending death;

Pain is a part of me as much as writing is a part of me.

I know the Rorschach by heart 

and the inkblots dye my mind.

- Juan Pablo Duboue 2014

Juan Pablo Duboue was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1986. Currently pursuing a masters in Contemporary English Literature, he works as a teacher, interpreter and translator. Apart from writing poetry and short stories, Juan Pablo is also a singer and a ballet dancer. 

New Poetry by Craig Kurtz

Everything

The curious manner in which

you brush indigo from your laughter;

the quaint style you have so it’s true

you demur future out of your sighs;

the upwards of your carmine,

the almost of your close by;

what I like about you

is nothing less than these sounds.

The uncanny motion you now

when you coax golden from out of your when;

the original tone you perpend

spins lavender terms with a grin;

the oblique of your then,

the amber surprise of your that;

the part about you I like

is the everything far uppermost.

You might be simply circumstantial

or rather singularly definitive;

you have a manner unpredictable

that knows how to upend a circle’s return;

and when I hear your magical,

I can see a far geography;

what happens is openly in white

with additional ineffable. So, there!

The perplexing technique you affix

when you auburn the former utmost;

the classic soon of the next you possess

is inevitable with blue swoops of good luck;

the innermost was a hint,

the outer-seeming is this:

what I love about you today

is the everything achieved hitherto.

- Craig Kurtz 2014

Craig Kurtz lives at Twin Oaks Intentional Community where he writes poetry while simultaneously handcrafting hammocks. Recent work has appeared in Bird’s Thumb, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Blotterature, The Blue Hour, Drunk Monkeys, Fishfood & Lavajuice, Literati Quarterly, Indigo Rising, Harlequin Creature, No Assholes, Reckless Writing and The Tower Journal.