by Robert Hampson

tiger stripes
4 carrol clarkson / simphiwe sesanti

because these were not my compatriots
though they looked like me & spoke my language
because my time was not my own but sold
in gated compounds, air–conditioned rooms
no ancestor spoke to me through my dreams
though I have braided my hair into corn–rows
no ancestor waited for me in the dark
now the line tentatively advances
& these braided lives have been transformed
as the first scratch in the earth writes the plot
against gas & batons & rubber bullets
& my time was not my own but given
& these are now my companions
as if they looked like me & spoke my tongue

 by Robert Hampson

ink swirls in water clouds over mountains
the parchment burns the dust of horses’ hooves
he smokes the hives to gather wild honey
she ramps up the morphine to kill the pain
these are sites of erotic encounter
whispers & giggles as the lift ascends
this is the place where the old come to die
champagne glasses on a bedside table
something explicit on a pc screen
he climbs the stairs in his padded jacket
she lies alone in a darkened room
this is a city of red brick & lakes
a pale grey sun through a drizzle of mist
this is the end of all our adventures

by Peter Riley

***

At last the singing stops
and the boat on the river,
two lanterns alive, drifts
to the town and the orphanage
where a baby is offered, if you want it, take it.

***

There comes an end to fucking
and an end to the fucking century
and cows lean their heads on the stone walls,
grass grows beside the weir, an end
to dying. We see it coming and don’t know
what to do as the divide deepens
and the gangs form.

***

“In white and its limestone were interred
all mourning and the memory of tragedy.”

There is some wine left, and soft snow,
the red and the white, the lived picture.

“. . . creating within these very walls the possibility
of new energy, health, work, truth.”

Under winter’s shadow the ground holds.
Stay where you will be.

[quotations from Manlio Brusatin, A History of Colors
translated by Hopcke and Schwartx, 1991]

Look at them lying there dead, helpless,
soft cushions for limbs that can no longer feel,
quartz crystals staring out of skulls’ eye sockets
our songs halt at holes where once ears were.
You can tell them anything, they’ll believe it.
Tell them a red flower sprang up, dropping
intellectual tears, pale blue, to the thoughtless pavement.

by Robert Sheppard

Overdub of Long time a child, and still a child
by Hartley Coleridge

you were that child
and still your fight’s there in the
distanced classroom
blond man–boys rattle their toys
in their own echoes
your father strode the station foyer
attracting government spies
his thought–pulses becoming song

shelter inside this sonnet to exchange
the stock history of the avant–garde
for loose strands from the sociopath’s weave

we won a race that never ran
squatting in squat watchtowers to watch
failure in December blight us in May

14th May 2020