Hi all, prompted by Robbie’s email to use the website! Here is a poet I am just discovering, a female beat generation poet… I had been thinking, I know about Allen Ginsberg, Frank O Hara and some of the other men but who were the women of that breakthrough movement. Here’s one of them, Diana Di Prima: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54974/buddhist-new-year-song
Zombie
Don’t let the legends mislead you;
we’re keen on personal hygiene.
I shower every day, sometimes twice.
I can tell you a thing or two about showers.
I have eaten the flesh of millions,
rejoiced in the sweet taste of blood,
following orders from above,
a mere instrument without guilt.
Look, I am moving towards you
arms outstretched, goose-stepping
in welcome as you step from the train.
This is the law; I am not responsible.
Each dawn, I am reanimated
ready to draw up another list of numbers.
So many zeroes; I am bloated with them.
You call me a bureaucrat, desk murderer
but when the order comes, tendons twitch,
watery eyes open wide in response.
Someone must move. Someone must act.
There is so much joy in this banality.
How it all began, I can’t remember.
There was a time when it was easy
to tell the living from the undead.
After Wansee, everything changed.
Look at my neck; no sign of a bolt
and the stitches have begun to heal.
I walk the streets of Buenos Aires,
innocent as the day I was created.
Martin Zarrop
Membership of Cross Border Poets has reached bursting point. Regrettably, from January 2017 onwards, we are unable to accept new members but will review the situation in six months time.
Just a test – ignore
Sun applies a tourniquet,
drips green into brown,
sups up red filigree.
Pump up
plump up,
ready up
for the sugar rush.
Mummy and daddy
waiting for the biggy
forestalled
asked their five year old
`where do babies come from`?
`tut tut tut, its hardly rocket science!
Clear water
A dove drinks
A caress of raindrops
As she flutters
Beneath the cascade
Of cold water
There just for her
As she relishes her
Cool drink
With seed in abundance
Lying on a dry earth
She perches there
Quietly cooing
Now replete
Read Me
It’s not that I think I’m right
It’s not that I want to present the facts
It’s not that I think you are wrong
It’s not that I want to change anyone.
I just want you to see it
how I see it
and spend time with me.
With this.
Coffee in hand
fifteen minutes of pre-school debate
Tussel – four minutes by Thesaurus
twenty four nouns
twenty two verbs
fifteen minutes of coffee and sour grapes.
Spit spit spit.