Poetry from Blue Fred Press

Monday, April 24, 2006

Tim Sansom

WHEN I WAS


When I was a boy aged five with pensive scrutiny
I looked and reckoned at Horn lane’s unceasing flow of cars
Apocalyptic fancies though a thought mode new to me
Soon corrupted how I heard the birds and saw the stars.


Calculating patterned growths and broken oaths I felt
Doubtless that we faced a vast impending wave of change
I sensed the cards of disregard which we mankind have dealt
To soon be shuffled by the earth and dealt back in her rage


Then aged ten complexities placed next to me had grown
With accelerations of unprecedented pace
Ruining at leisure tools to measure man was thrown
Into what appeared to be to me an alien place


A place where inconsistency insists to be a pest
By smashing into smithereens our ethics goals and faiths
With morals made like lemonade we’re fed and without rest
Subliminally a clueless viewless few indoctrinate

Then aged sixteen I first sat a different school of lessons
Innocent of truth that well intended kin hid well
My eyes opened to the present’s calibre of weapons
I was weak with disbelief their ease to unleash hell


I loved life being thirty and if given Godly choice
This I would have crystallised to time forever long
Balanced between spring of limbs and having found one’s voice
I could watch earth’s rising seas and choking trees whilst strong


In a twirling giddy month or two I’ forty-two
Weather’s jarred behaviour has the seasons bumping heads
Arsenals aren’t permitted to be owned by those who do
Order, peace and kindliness hang on today’s frayed threads.


TIM SANSOM is a Northampton-based musician and poet.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Bruce

what I will remember

a taxi ride with you
through the roads around Wilby
two summers ago.
windows open a notch.
breeze flutters our hair
and on the car radio
'Summer Breeze' by the Isely Bros
coincidental, but perfect.
we are going to Northampton
catching a coach for Birmingham
our first big adventure.
you are animated
looking ahead at the road.
i keep touching your hand.
i'm amazed by the beauty
of the half-smile your face
wears in profile
puzzled like a curious child:
to be here with you
in the summer
in love--
such mysterious fortune.
i can't quite believe
i deserve it

Albert DeGenova

Enough Space

give me the Blues
give me
the Blues
all the space I need
is three chords
to tell a howling
'ya beautiful honey'
knuckles cracking at sun-up story
give me the
Blues
with deep pockets of bass rhythm that pumps
like the heart of black earth and
dreams deferred.
The Blues is
enough room to breathe is
three chords
and a bit of sunlight
through dirt- and smoke-fogged
windows, the Blues
is an attic garret in
Paris or Prague or New York
or Chicago or
a sharecropper's shack in
Bogaloosa Lousiana -
where art
without any name at all
first cries its be-wah-wah-be-wah-dah.

give me enough space
give me the Ba-looos

Albert DeGenova is the Editor/ Publisher of "After Hours", a journal of Chicago writing and art (http://www.afterhourspress.com ). He's also one half of the performance poetry duo AvantRetro, which appears throughout the greater Chicago area. Of his first book "Back Beat", poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote, "Back Beat beats everything for being beater than the Beats."
More of Albert's poetry will appear in forthcoming issues of ANGEL HEAD.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Bruce

Spring

the bare trees
have bird villages
on top

Bruce

controversy on the bus
the pensioners are treated
to a culture clash

my moustache versus yours
seeing each other off
through a perspex window

just give me my change,
driver, we'll act like
Woodstock never happened

Thursday, April 13, 2006

fallen angel heads

from angel head #2

Ralph Murre

Flyin high this angel
wings still beating that
thrump thrump thing
we used to hear
Here, here!
Glasses of econobeer raised
bkerouac praised
May the beat go on
be it angelic at midnight
or wee hour demonic
thrump thrump thing
transatlantic
harmonic


(bkerouac was for a long time not only the editor's admonition to himself--ie, be like Kerouac--that is, write with surreal elastic eye and deep soul--but also his email address. It now serves as part of the URL for ANGEL HEAD)




Two Poems

us, then
young eyes smiled as stars
but words carried sad world's cloud
as we sipped coffee
music of strange lands
flavor of warm baklava
sweetness of struggle
we would eat, often at the same table
never shared, though, were our cold, narrow beds
honeyed afternoons
of vinegar morning'd days
dark weight of unrest
pickets of protest
united in common cause
desired each other
like magnetic poles, unable to touch
we were attracted to what would not be

My Room

Asian art.
A haiku, framed.
And there was dirt.
There was dirt and mess--lots of both--
in what I had hoped would be my wonderfully
neat somehow Japanese black-floored room.
I thought by creating the room I could
create a nice new self. A neat self.
White walls angled upward to apex of beauty
now spider webs but they have the right
I suppose to use what I can't reach.
High corners. Peaked ceiling.
I'm not tall after all.
Window to the east--morning light
now filtered through fly specks and blue streak.
Flies have to live too or spiders starve.
Sleeping mat, disheveled covered with books
my bad art--no girls.
Floor mat, beyond repair.
Some shoes, creepy.
Sandals, really creepy.
Clothes, never in style anywhere piled everywhere.
Never in style anywhere--no girls.
Really creepy--no girls.
Not in my room.
Not tonight.
Not soon.
Can't remember the haiku

fallen angel heads

from angel head # 2

ronald baatz




on the fourth day
i named the fly
howard

an icy evening
a bowl of noodles and thoughts
of a naked woman

in the driveway
shoveling snow that's the same
eerie white as the moon

lonely pussy willows~
the only place snow
seems to be sticking

we act like children
laughing when i fart in bed
between my bony legs

in the window
enough leafless branches
to weave me a coffin

the rake~
of no use against
the constant rain

a rare thunderstorm in march
knocks the bread machine
out of commission

screeching like baby birds
in a crowded nest~
dumplings frying

out in the field
waiting to piss
it starts raining first

after the game
the chess pieces stand around
shocked at what happened

old crow
so close to dying~
why walk across that frozen pond?

fallen angel heads

(title Ralph Murre)

The Angel Head Archive Space

from angel head # 2

t.kilgore splake



untitled

on the road darkness
lonesome hours passing
driven by mad desires
awash black guiness bitters
super high buzz
stiff foamy beard
holy outlaw poet
moving beyond
well-rounded schoolboy
dickhead first class
reenacting others lives
chasing after silence
listening for voices
seeking faces
emery margaret
paula barbara olga
dreamy nightmare


winter day into darkness

earlier CLIFFS ravens
raucous insouciant
cockandballs
pussyandtits
piercing arctic clarity
lone wolf
zig-zagging prints
light powdery dusting
driven by hunger
warm mate hot rut
cattails snowy cones
distant muted church chimes
shadowy dusk falling
shrouding fifth street "le metrops"
five o'clock home bound
headlights eerie glow
bardic graybeard
soft amazing grace
light blue-ribbon buzz
keen alky perspective
backwater poet
living on the cheap
karma properly aligned
free to sit
play buddha

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

SHARON AUBERLE

CHOICES

A man sits hunched on steps.
The light around him is fragile.

Rain begins, spotting his thin shirt.
He smokes, the smell mingles with wet.

Across the river, lightning sparks
over a silent carousel.

We are waiting for a bus
to take us in from the rain.

For a moment
I could love him.

The bus arrives, rain pours.
We board, he slips quietly to the back.

I hear two women reading from a book:
what if you could choose your own death?

One reads to the other. They giggle. I don't
think I could love them.

A man sits next to me.
He looks like the Dalai Lama.

Yes, I will love him,
spinning silently

on the carousel
in the rain.


SHARON AUBERLE will have more poems in a forthcoming edition of ANGEL HEAD.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

captain america comes home from the road

i watched him die. i held him in my arms and saw the life drain out of his uncomprehending eyes. i watched him die.
they shot my bike out from under me. two yahoos with a big gun driving where no law could reach them. they left me bloody under the burning teardrop gas tank. fire consumed the stars and stripes that had been painted there.
and now i'm here again, in "the old hometown". only, it doesn't look the same. (i watched him die.)
how are you gonna go back when everything has changed?
pool games on a friday night. lonely girls, sad derelict beauties in search of a love connection they think they'll only get thru sex. old drunks who know too much to be mad at anyone. these are my companions in the neon-lit darkness of the bars.
i lie awake for days smoking, stare at the damp rot circle in the ceiling and wait for it to fall. old freaks come by with roaches gossip plans. i send them all away. i can't stand them anymore. i can't stand anyone.
i get a gun. (I WATCHED HIM DIE). my plan is to decorate my bathroom walls with blood, join Billy where it doesn't hurt. tomorrow. today there is no reason. today there's nothing but the memory of his face in death.
every time i shut my eyes i watch him die again