Miss Lakeishia Sings The Blues

Listen, mister, you're a guest
at the Night Owl Club
so you can sit here
all night long, tip me
after every song,
buy me scotch
till the final gong
but none of this will help.

You'll still go home alone
unless some other lady has a need
to make her rent
and sees the opportunity
you offer. It won't be me;
I can't be bothered.
I need a different kind of man,
a man who'll hug me tighter

than my panties can,
a big old man
whose big old tongue
will be my tampon
when I'm dry.
If you'll get off that stool
and look in the mirror
behind those whiskey bottles

standing at attention,
you'll see clearly why
you can never be that man,
not even for an hour.
I'm no Billie Holliday,
but even with my glasses off,
I can see that you
ain't no John Wayne.

Donal Mahoney

donalmahoney@charter.net
---------------------

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. He has had poems published in a variety of print and online publications, including Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), Ancient Heart Magazine (Australia), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Poetry Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), The Christian Science Monitor and Commonwealth.

Awakening

The sun trembled of its hot rays
sensitive to the cold, he remained there, doing nothing
he looked at the world in flames
the earth burning
the hell in front of his eyes and the flowers' as impure as the skies
when they ejaculate the psalms of the divine
avenger.

It is like a flashback:
a brother at his sides
seem to wait patiently
before the scream lay them down.
Marie, you still suffer from these infamies,
Joe shakes you such a long time, so often,
flowers of the fields
the songs put the spell on you
go back to Consecrated Land,
go back into the blue cave,
the children will show you the way.

In the blue cave
I am lying down on a bed of straw,
I am looking at the vault,
the solidified drawings,
the traces of my depressed ancestors.

The house burns.
The brain explodes.
I don't want to stay here anymore

Walter Ruhlmann Mamoudzou,
Mayotte, France

Walter Ruhlmann was born in 1974 in France. He currently lives in Mamoudzou, Mayotte where he works as an English teacher. Walter lived in England from 1995 to 1997. He began publishing Mauvaise graine, a literary magazine, in 1996, now know as mgvesion2>datura. Back in France, he has carried on publishing and writing mostly poetry, although he has published short stories in several French-language magazines. Walter is the author of several poetry booklets and published poems in magazines such as Magnapoets, Poetic Diversity, Aesthetica Magazine, Ygdrasil, Above Ground Testing. He edited and translated poems for the bilingual free verse and form section for the anniversary issue of Magnapoets in January 2011.

Prism

Just as the sun descends into
A drop of water
Creating a canvass of hues
The 7 columns of mist-spray
Embrace it with open arms
Painting a world of colours into
Its little body

I too possess a sun
And when I embrace it
A spectrum of rainbow-flowers grow from within me
All it takes is a slight change of direction
And again I become
A simple droplet of water
Blank and colourless.

Rehan Qayoom
London
www.rehanqayoompoet.blogspot.com

Cuckold's Plea

You'll never see him again, you say,
but what if he brings to your room
a midnight poem he says
he's written for you.

Will you read it together
a couple of times, out loud,
as you have in the past?
And what if he then

shoots like a rocket
into the forest, igniting the fire,
as he has in the past.
Will you see him again?

We have the children
to think about.
That's why I'm here.
We all need to know.


Donal Mahoney
P.O. Box 140184
St. Louis,
Missouri 63114-0184
U.S.A.
donalmahoney@charter.net

Shadows Falling from the Heart

for Kelly K. Moran

Before they fell in love
he'd met her heart in a dream.
It offered hope and beat within him,
brought soil and light to the trees.

Then she came to him, full-bright,
an unearthly light across the fields.

As she spoke
her voice lifted flowers from the gray.
They swelled and broke the silence within him,
brought blue to the sea.

In such time she carried him, sleep-quiet,
placed his broken body in the arms of angels.

When the shadows fell away, one by one,
they could see that his heart resembled hers.
An undeniable sign.

Oh love, mysterious thing,
as vital to life as the stars are to the universe,
you are what gives God his sight.


Jason Sturner
Wheaton, Illinois, U.S.A.
www.jasonsturner.blogspot.com

Swing and Creak

See-sawing in the breeze-
the thin crusted line
between the disparate worlds
is trodden down by soft petal-toed feet,
on this day of horrors.

On other dark hued days preceding.
On the long oily chain of days following.

Said but not spread,
only to whim
and not design.
It is not bright,
not suffiently warm enough to
gnaw holes in the freezing ice that covers everything.
freezing innocuous
moments like diseased flies in amber.

Find oneself in a familiar, previously trodden down spot?
Say welcome back Mrs.


Rebecca Woods
becki.woods@hotmail.co.uk

Homesick

Far.
It is not long since the moon crept in
And broke a few silver paces across the deck.
Not Far.
Since the light held your eyes,
As a lonely crystal flew
Across your face.
Liquid.
It is not far.
Since the day waved goodbye to morning
And welcomed politely the afternoon.
It is not far.
Since the earth jumped to caress you
Warm its kiss upon your face encased in nevers and not evers.
It is not far.
To walk to hear your laughter.
No, no,
It is not far.


Natalie Williams,
Wirral, UK
nataliewilliams-gypsybutterfly@hotmail.co.uk