Thank You to Tokyo Poetry Journal

Very happy to have three of my own included in Tokyo Poetry Journal Vol. 14  Eros.

https://www.topojo.com/product-page/volume-14-eros 

White

Tea shirt like a too short dress

occasional exposures of hair

as I walk across the room

stop

You kneel

inhale

Breathe long against me

Put your mouth to me

I lean

Again

I lean

 again

Squeeze

Draw me in

Again

This time wide opening  with your tongue

Sister Stones

Today I brought her stones,

sister stones

white round found together on the beach

Not the waxy white,

not glassy grey,

but almost opal

Round

Alike

Together

Put into her wet

from my having sucked their salt

Marj

There was nothing in that night

which did not taste like your blood.

I licked the rusty stains from your thighs,

following down trails to that hot slick pool of fresh salt water,

nestled in the cave of all our sorrows.

I made you laugh so wild, so steam gut wild,

as if you too howled at the sunless sky.

I pumped you ‘til  white milk mingled

with  dark new moon flavours of you blood,

and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

                                                                28 May 85

Volume 14: Eros

 

Eros. ​

​

Poetry and translations by Sayaka Asaba (translated by Jordan A. Y. Smith), John Solt, PD Lyons, Illias Tsagas, Davord Griffiths, Daisuke Yakumo, Jes Kalled, Rachel Ferguson, Jacob R. Moses, Jeremy Gadd, C. E. J. Simons, Tim Kahl, Paul Rowland, Debs Max, Greg Snazz, Kevin Carter, Repatriare Perdita, Duncan Whom, Farah Ali, Alison Lubar, Noriko Mizuta (translated by Jordan A. Y. Smith), Ryan Dzelzkalns, Shozo Torii (translated by Taylor Mignon), Samuel Louis Spencer, Sarah Sands Phillips, Ulyses Razo, Alexandra Fossinger, Alex Watson, Srinjay Chakravarti, Edward Levinson, Al Ningen, Yowen Xan, Datiko, Mihiro Ogawa, Jordan A. Y. Smith, Nishalya, Herman Bartelen, Zoria Petkoska Kalajdjieva, Jonathan Pessant, Joy Waller, Michael Ely, Alicia Elkort, Andrew Gebert, Bill Howell, David Chenery, Sorcha  Chisholm, Simon Scott, Philippe Burgin, Jeffrey Johnson, Robert Moreau, Mariko Kitakubo, 

Kaori Shoji, Jake Adelstein, Elysian, Barbara Summerhawk, Nadia Arioli, Mat Chiappe, Joan Anderson, Tim Exley, Allan Lake, Taylor Mignon, Sergio A. Ortiz Rivera, Ndaba Sibanda, 

Marcellus Nealy, John Francis Cross, Tracy Sherman, Robot Bastard, Miracle Jones, 

​

Poetry by Jes Kalled, Brian Wood-Koiwa, Vincent Aimée, Sasha Drozd, Neil Craig Chapman, Debs Max, Rorbert Holbrook, Sanjay Bradford, Ilias Tsagas, May Drew, Herman Bartelen, John Meyer, Marcellus Nealy, Peter Leghorn.

​

Cover Art by Jes Kalled

from Salamanders by pd lyons

Slow

 

Slow as a screw cap wine morning dark faded into rain blocked sunrise. Chug of the coffee making scents of redemption and awareness fills my kitchen. Unlike the rest of the world. Friday is the hardest one too many days dragged wake-ups not really awake when you’ve not slept. Now among the shadows forgotten aspects of our truth. Hamlet the shadow of Summer’s dream.  The eighteen year old girl sentenced to life for murder of a nine year old girl when she was fifteen. Tried as an adult. No blood ever found on her or her clothes. No murder weapon recovered. Her sixteen year old boyfriend, interviewed six times by thy FBI, failed polygraph, none of that allowed to the jury. Fifteen year old in jail for three years before convicted, denied application to continue education, innocent until proven guilty. Eighteen year old Tibetan girl Buddhist nun under Chinese occupation. Practitioner of compassion for all beings. Sits down outside the abbey in a pool of gasoline – lights the match in protest, light upon atrocities, atrocious act among atrocious acts. She and all who immolate are terrorists, seek only to disrupt the lawful Chinese government and it’s people. This is the morning shadow of the night before. Coffee the shadow of the cheap screw cap bitchy white wine slowing me down into crow sound shapes emerged from darkness into grey dawn.

 

Saturday, February 18, 2012

rings of saturn sci fi as read by the author PD Lyons

 excerpt from the poem Rings of Saturn by pd lyons

and you know this feeling

it is the constant star

as if you’ve been home sick all your life

for a thing you’ve always known

yet never had…

but these days are good

and also familiar 

days of peace

wet earth and time passing slowly

like the time of children and animals

the time of growing things

each moment

unfolding

each moment you’re knowing

you’ve know it all along

even before there were words to describe it

 

just as you also know

constant stranger moving through these days

unable to stay for very long

a thief only able to carry little bits away

beneath the leather jacket

in a pocket next to your heart.

 

hear the whole sci fi poem as read by pd Lyons from Lost Worlds Vol 2 #11 1990~

From The Country Of Stones by PD Lyons

riverside, Waterbury Ct.

From The Country Of Stones

me and the small talk angel

find no way to mark the years

not much at all worth mentioning

on corners of dull marble

we lean

without surprise

without concern

without big questions

just slight curiosities

bringing us together

in a penny tossing

park bench

kind of way

from the book Caribu & Sister Stones Poetry by pd Lyons published by Lapwing, Belfast.

https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/p-d-lyons

https://books.google.ie/books/about/Caribu_Sister_Stones.html?id=m4v3dIprgUIC&redir_esc=y

riverside, Waterbury Ct.

The Old One Sitting On A Bench by pd lyons

 

I am the old one sitting on a bench

I’m tired

the dog restless, bored

I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years

 

they say the earth is a planet

spun in space

part of a solar system

part of a galaxy

part of a universe

 

they say people who study such thigs are weird

but how could it be otherwise?

to constantly contemplate the tininess of our lives

amidst such vastness

 

I am the old one sitting on a bench

the dog, restless wanting to go

I am wishing he was smaller

so that he couldn’t pull on my arm so hard

feb. 2012 fron salamanders by pd lyons

Today

 

Today on the great yellow sheet of possibility he hurried the blue notes of coffee too hot to drink comfortably. It was the gold dead grass of February, not dead, sleeping, not sure of the difference. Empty unsure sky whether snow or rain no birds at the apple tree feeders wishing to find out. Where ever it is they go; the birds are always out. Can you imagine a place where no one knows how they should behave, where the fear factor absent no motivation, no explanation, what would we be like? Compassionate birds always out never needing to steal. The cheapest coffee comes in a real steel container, has more weight than most and tastes as good as the rest. Now are there things un-wishing to do but wishing were done. The energy of that un-equated equation can be used to do which must be done. What is the term for an equation that is unequal? An un-equal equation is an error. Do all errors need remedy? Do they need to be remedied? And hot from the hoody sweat shirt and seventy degree thermostat he pulls it up over his head remembers five years old and getting stuck.

 

today’s ruff off the cuff draft by pd lyons w/pix

 

We had walked this city into the dark

hung with stories of hard living people

stood with them

sat with them

shared drink and smoke with them

honored with their acceptance

humbled by their stories

afraid of their violence

their ache for love

never the less

we  walked with them into their dark

knowing ourselves to be mercenary 

vampiric poets lived off their blood

the only way they’d be preserved 

 

Dog Stories from salamander by pd lyons

DOG STORIES

 

 

 

Maybe the boy is six years old when his father takes him. They walk behind the houses through a maze of added on structures. They stop at one. His father opens one of the splintered doors part way and slips in. ” Stay by the door,” his father tells him, ” don’t let it close.” Then his father goes all the way into the dark. He can hear the footsteps of his father. Then there are other sounds, other things moving in there. He can make out the shape of his father. See him bend down and reach into a cornered mass of moving whimpering things. Now there is another sound, a rising yelp and yap. Dogs! His father keeps dogs in the shed!

His father backs into the daylight, hauling with both hands the lead and then the dog. The dog is black with golden tan on its underside. Its long black tail curls down between its legs up along its belly. Its low diamond shaped head moves side to side like a great snake .

They walk. His father’s boots crunch the hard ground. The dog skids, pulled against its own trembling legs. The boy’s soft small steps follow. Around the corner, against the far wall his father leads them.

The boy watches. His father attaches the lead from the dog to a cable. The cable runs up a series of supports to the top of the wall, and then angles back down the same wall to the ground. There is an almost echo snap as his father secures the end of the lead to the cable and walks away. The dog whines and tries to follow, but the cable pulls up short. There are more dog sounds as it turns, tries another direction, comes up short again. Suddenly the dog stiffens. Its head begins to rise. Its front legs come off the ground. At last it shows some canine aggression. It snaps and snarls wildly. Tries to turn in such a way so as to tear its attacker apart. But the dogs attacker is a thin braided cable steadily tightening. It gets harder and harder for the dog to do anything. Finally his father anchors the cable.

On its tiptoes, the dog stretches taller than the boy now. Quickly his father returns to the dog, stretches out his arm, jabs at that golden inner thigh. The dog makes sounds like screaming. It takes a few seconds for the boy to notice. There is blood on the dog’s leg. It pulses from the place his father touched. His father goes and slackens the cable. Lowers the dog back to the ground. The dog at first a frenzy of licking and yelping gives way to a slow motion pitter patter of paws. Eventually, it curls itself up on the hard wet ground and moans.

He no longer hears these things. He does not remember how old he really was that first time, that moment when at the point of happiness he realised, “This dog is no gift to me from my father.” He does remember how to treat them so they stay afraid, how to clean them and how to strike the artery deep enough but keep the hole small. He does not remember if it was his ninth or tenth birthday when his father first handed him the blade.

He is walking down the street. Notices a group of strangers. Someone he knows is with them and calls out, saying “Come, join us.” .The strangers speak a language he does not know. They are two men and a young child. The child is wearing a brilliant pink fur coat. Someone he knows explains, ” These are the buyers of skins. This child, the daughter of one of them. They want you to know about this child’s coat. That it is made from your skins.” Not sure if he understood this last part he asks if this is so. “Yes. Yes. This little girl’s coat is made of skins from you.” He looks again at the child. He squats down before her, extends his hand and stops. He looks up to them and from one of the men receives a silent nod of permission. He reaches out to her, she is not afraid of him. He touches her coat, pinches it, rolls it back and forth between his thumb and fore finger. He opens his hands. Runs his palms along her shoulders and down the sleeves. “ It is a wonderful coat. An amazing colour. A lovely gift for a child. But,” shaking his head he stands up. “No.” he says and shakes his head again, “ Tell them no. I have never dogs the colour of this.”

He does not remember the names of those buyers or why they laugh when he tells them the truth. He does remember the little girl. The look of her at him squatting there as if they shared some secret then. As if he had told her how he could no longer see the face of his father, or hear the voice of his mother, even though he had promised never to forget.

 

from 1978-79 Salamanders by pd lyons

How many roads?

How many Mr. Bob? I’m sitting here writing nonsense while millions of people are dying. I wonder how many people think about how that is. I mean the clown knows, the artist who paints squares all day knows, the cartoon characters know – we all know how many are dying daily, starving, bleeding to death because one day they stood up and their bones ripped through their too tight skin. We know the U.S. U.K. U.S.S.R. Red China, Israelis. Dictatorships supporting other dictatorships throughout the world in order to exert their obsessions for oil, slavery, spy stations, territory on and off the earth. We know that constantly someone is beaten, burned, shot, gassed, raped to death and yet we joke, and we paint, and we write to keep you and ourselves from going mad. – to keep you from realising someday “they” will come for you… Death has no country, it might have a cunt but no country, no religion and so fuck you I’m spiting it out no more distractions and I don’t care anymore who the government butchers for gas oil or gold and I don’t care who is starving to death or any of that shit. If I could save your life? I might not – I wouldn’t. What is there to save anyway? The only people who are real are the ones who have faced death. The ones who live intimate with it every day – Not you Mr. America living in you immortal dream – jokes, paintings, novels – You are not real and when death comes knocking you’ll have the balls to attempt a deal. No one in America believes in death – it can’t happen to me, you gotta be joking, what kinda story is this, just a dream a painting a piece of sculpture and don’t believe everything in the headlines – In the land where material is god, death gets no respect. So not believing in death makes the American petrified of living, concerned only with the preservation, presentation, perpetuation of the illusion. So don’t give me that bull shit about the artist Mr soviet capitalist. We know what is happening, we are painfully aware that behind the guise of freedom, behind the tender mercies of the state lies only a commercial co-op working together for the maintenance  and furtherance of power for the few over the many – every good clown wears a face of sorrow, every painter paints squares, every writer use black ink, every good buy deserves fun – In the modern age the artists role in society is to provide diversion and distraction for the masses – and every Suzy homemaker is miserable because they are forced to exist in a cushioned little box where death is a stranger and life is bored to death.

So, I’m ready to go. Tonight, is stag tonight. A ten-dollar ticket for a friend who grew up with me and I’m gonna drink and be rude and dance a jig with death at my shoulder whispering to me constantly on the value of each moment. I’m gonna eat ’til it sickens me cause I don’t know when I’ll get my next meal and because I don’t care if I puke my guts. Maybe like Henry Miller let fate lead me where it will. Let me be a victim only to my own destiny. How far can you go on a full stomach and drink? Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go and hot shit son of a bitch I’m gonna enjoy my senses reeling.

The Girl in the Silver Mercedes by pd lyons

come back

I want to know

what’s it like

all your dreams come true

your hair longer now than when we were teenagers

leaned against high school halls

100 years old then

gone now

gone

the one word, one thing

applies, can be applied,

utterly applicable to every person,

place, thing, concept, category –

what else is new?

                                                                                 2.2.12

~

 

paris by pd lyons