The Literary Review
Plastics
She is a curator of sunsets
a self -appointed guardian of the beach
so she picks the immortal pellets
like polluted pearls
poseurs among the sea shells,
pecked up by
wobbling seagulls.
These birds have
a gut feeling
their heads swivel
in a chaos
of bulging eyes
heavy with
the detritus of
careless lives.
Even the lust
of the flies
have been fooled
as they perch
on plastic
and search desperately
for a kiss of
blood.
- Doug Holder
We Are Gathered Here Today
We are gathered here today
joined by ancestors & spirits
after being kegged & shut away
as sheltered refugees
in dark forgotten spaces
while words resonate in silence
ringing in mute dreams
the whole world is burning
still gathering bones & spewing dust
but with subtle strength
we endure.
We have returned & gathered
in our great gathering places
a pulsating city of hustle & heel
in hallowed locations
on the streets & in the shadows
where words & worlds bend
confronting the heartland
like the Battle of Turnhout
celebrating liberation
peering into sunlight
with poetic psalms & prayers.
We gather together
collecting syllables
assembling verbs &
metaphors that devour tongues
letting stanzas dictate our lives
line after line of
unmoored words
terrorized by rhetoric
that sings in a scattered state
all to defeat words somersaulting
into spheres of oppression & hate.
We gather in harmony
creating word-weapons with
diverse traditions chasing after pure art
stripping souls bare
in a world foreknown
to messengers of the lost
giving birth to vocal gestures
fit for the conjugation of joy
poetry is our life sentence
an implosion of ideas
an explosion of truths.
We gather
re-remembering Hughes’ songs of
dream singers & storytellers
that delight & end in wisdom
writing pieces of poetry
pasted in the past
marking them anew
wondering who is listening
to these disconnected voices
that sink deep into
collective consciousness.
We gather again & again
into a new kind of groove
Steve’s spirit in the
presence of our future legacy
in this time & place
among strangers who love words
here on this bridge between
starshine & clay celebrating
a human anthology of poets & artists
gathered here today
gathering, gathering
once again
the tribes are gathering.
- GABRIELLE DAVID