Caye Caulker (poem, take 4)

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Caye Caulker

In the café below
the locals talk about the old times
about Eve and the apple
about Paradise lost
about how all the bottles
washed up on the shore
carry the same message.

pelicans plummet into the bluebottle sea
sting rays undulate

out on the coral reef
tiny organisms
fret about climate change
and that damn carbonic acid

I fink the pH is dropping, I really do

meanwhile, over in San Pedro
on the Redneck Riviera
hermetically sealed resorts
march north towards Mexico
and thin, blond soccer moms
mingle with sun-damaged matrons
dedicated to the preservation
of floral print muumuus.

in the café below, Bob Marley’s still jammin’.

 

This poem has had a few lives. Participating in open link over at earthweal. Head over and check out Brendan’s thought provoking and eloquent post .

 

Issue #17 Vapid Magazine

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Issue #17 Vapid Magazine

In Issue #17, coming to a newsstand nowhere near you, we discuss..

The environment, it’s everywhere

Our environment correspondent, Jordan Shallowditch, is away on vacation so our celebrity watcher and gossip columnist, Simon Shallowpond is picking up the slack, he offers this twitter friendly poem:

 

Plastics? What Plastics?

no need to fret
no need to fuss
all is well
‘cos Kristen Bell’s
got a bamboo toothbrush.

Well done, Simon!

The Oscars

Our movie critic, Georgina Shallowglass, discusses the Oscars and asks the question:
Why would anyone divorce Adam Driver?

Plus, she describes that epiphanic, that life-altering moment when she realised that Jane Austen didn’t write Little Women (it was those American accents).

Politics

It’s been a busy year so far in politics and our political correspondent, Jonathan Shallowpit, asks the controversial question:
Did the founding fathers fuck it up?

..and if not, how come the semi-literate son of a billionaire, with bad hair and a genius for marketing dumb ideas could destroy the whole shebang , the whole house of cards by simply saying :” Nah, I’m not going to do that”.

Footnote

Jonathan, I’m afraid, will be leaving Vapid Magazine. A number of his co-workers have complained that he is making them think too much, resulting in headaches and a toxic working environment.

Vapid Magazine, home of all things vapid!

 

Participating in Open Link Night over at dverse , check them out!

2 Poems in Cyphers Magazine (“Ascension” and “Prairie”)

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Cyphers magazine has published two of my poems –  “Ascension” and “Prairie”– in their Winter 2019/2020 issue.  I am really pleased as always to be published in Cyphers and in particular this time as my poems appear on the same pages as a poem by Fred Johnston, a poet I have long admired.

…Jim Feeney

Cyphers is a Dublin based print only magazine which has been in existence since 1975. They publish poets from all over the world, both new and established and this issue features a number of translated poems.

Cyphers can be found at http://www.cyphers.ie

If you want to subscribe to Cyphers magazine, you can do so by writing to the following address:

Cyphers Magazine, 3 Selskar Terrace, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, Ireland.

Subscription rate is €21.00 for three issues including postage

In Britain £20.00 for three issues including postage

US $42.00 for three issues including postage

 

 

Solastalgia (tanka)

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Solastalgia (an alternative etymology)

solas in Gaelic
means light, solastalgia,
a longing for light

hidden under a bushel
at the end of a tunnel.

The challenge over at earthweal is to “Write a new poem on the theme of Solastalgia” which is “a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.”

 

 

Fracking Song (2)

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Fracking Song

You’re standing on the corner
Watching the trucks go rolling past
Pumping out their diesel fumes
Pumping out that carbon gas

It’s the middle of winter
And it’s twenty below
And that gas just sits there
With nowhere to go

Something’s wrong in the valley
Babies stillborn
Ten in one year
And they  call that the norm

Something’s wrong in the valley
Something toxic in the ground
Something wrong in the valley
Since the frackers came to town.

That rock’s been down forever
With its hydrocarbon payload
When they  blow it all apart
They  can’t control where it goes

And that water that’s left standing
Evaporating in the sun
The residue will be with us
Long after they are gone

Something’s wrong in the valley
Babies stillborn
Ten in one year
And they call that the norm

Something’s wrong in the valley
Something toxic in the ground
Something wrong in the valley
Since the frackers came to town.

You can blame the politicians
The special interests groups
Blame the fracking company
They all don’t give a fuck

There’s only one thing they understand
One thing that they know
Keep riding that fossil fool train
As far as it will go.

There’s something wrong in the valley
Babies stillborn
Placentas like ribbons
And they call that the norm

Something’s wrong in the valley
Something toxic in the ground
Something wrong in the valley
Since the frackers came to town

 

Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal

Machu Picchu (poem)

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Machu Picchu

I

Backpacks
bucket lists
smart phones
selfie sticks
altitude pills
attitude pills,
sun hats
sun block
Lonely Planet Guidebook,
don’t drink the water
don’t eat the salad
no ice please
this is our tribe
this is our tribe.

II

The Incas long ago
left for the valley
to grow their quinoa,
wheat and corn
but we keep coming
to look for something
that may have been left behind;
we are a benign invader
a tad earnest maybe
mild-mannered to a fault
but hand us a weak wifi signal
and we go ape-shit.
There are those among us
who have already abandoned
the physical world –
I see them
sitting in restaurants
heads bowed and thumbs
working beneath the table
connecting by radio waves
to a digital stream
of consciousness and banality.
I am he as you are he
and we are a river of electrons.

 

Photos by Marie Feeney

This poem was originally published in The Galway Review.

Taking part in Open Link Night over at dverse

Down and Out in Idabel (redux)

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Down and Out in Idabel

How Myron found himself in the parking lot
of the Holiday Inn in Idabel, Oklahoma
looking out at the road
on a Saturday morning in April
– after a breakfast of brittle bacon,
sausages slick with grease,
dry fluorescent scrambled eggs –
is not important.

The road pauses, a skittish dog roams.
Myron’s eyes are drawn to a dead armadillo
upside down on the hard shoulder
an empty beer can in its claws:
Old Milwaukee, prehistoric drunk,
someone’s joke.

A pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
over the fence a cow chews grass
and makes a meal of it.
Dogwoods bloom.
The cow moos like a reluctant foghorn.
Myron’s mood turns
he thinks about the cow,
Manifest Destiny,
the plight of the bison
our lust for red meat
while greenhouse gas
shimmies upwards
ice caps melt
glaciers retreat
and looking down
the road to Shreveport
buoyed by the prospect
of seeing Idabel
in his rear-view mirror
he quietly resolves
to recover what he was
before sadness lodged
like a wet sack
in the back
of his head.

This poem originally appeared in issue 38 of The SHOp poetry magazine (print) which was a fine magazine, unfortunately they closed up shop a few years ago.

Taking part in earthweal open link weekend, head over there and read Brendan’s very eloquent and comprehensive post on climate change.

This is my third in a series of climate change related posts, it wasn’t planned that way, but I guess that’s the way the wind is blowing this week!

 

 

 

 

 

Water (off a duck’s back)

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Water (off a duck’s back)

What’s that?…….no, no, it’s all rubbish,
climate change is a Deep State hoax.
By the way, forgot to mention
I have some ocean front for sale in Florida,
are you interested?
I hear you’re a good swimmer.
Ha, that’s just a joke,
God controls the climate
the rivers, lakes and seas.
Look what he did for Moses.
Our local preacher has a direct line,
just send a donation
before he gets arrested.
Joking again! Those rumours
are just not true.
Besides, our supreme leader, Donald, says
we are going to have a great climate
the best climate ever.
Do you know any Dutch people?
They’re good at handling all this water stuff.
Another thing, does anyone else
really miss the dinosaurs?
I had this rubber brontosaurus
when I was kid, I kind of liked it,
a velociraptor too…where was I?
Yes, this oceanfront property in Florida
it comes with a row boat.

The word of the week over at earthweal is water. Got the idea for this poem while reading Sarahsouthwest’s poem “Water Again”.

Also participating in open link night over at dverse.

Pigeon (Anthropocene Poem)

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Pigeon

Early December,
downtown Vancouver
and it’s raining
more than the usual
cats and dogs,
it feels like the city
is trapped
in a giant car wash.

All year long the weather
has been acting like a child
that hasn’t been taught limits.

Three months of summer drought.

We woke up one morning
and white ash from forest fires
covered the deck,
and that evening down on the beach
we were treated to
a red ball sunset
worthy of Beijing or Mumbai.
The Indian guy in the coffee shop
told me it made him feel homesick.

Something’s happening to the frogs.

The Oregon spotted frog is Canada’s most threatened amphibian,
I saw that on TV program called
“Canada’s Most Threatened Amphibians”.
Also threatened is the northern leopard frog.

Sea stars have sea star wasting syndrome

We’re losing song birds, bats and bees

The world is an orchestra
and the string section is leaving
one by one.

Anthropocene
Anthropocene
Sixth Extinction,
soon there will only be us.

******
At the corner of Georgia and Granville
a pigeon waddles through a puddle
created by a blocked storm drain

and I’m thinking:
Who’d be a pigeon on a day like this?
Who’d be a pigeon at a time like this?

 

The theme over at dVerse is “soliloquies”, I think this sort of fits!

Also taking part in Open Link over at earthweal ( a new blog which is well worth checking out)

 

Watching CNN (a sort of rant)

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Anderson, Chris and Don and their assembled pundits are discussing the assassination of General Soleimani, the Iranian general. They all agree that he was a “bad actor”, a “bad guy”. They don’t say “bad hombre”,but it’s knocking at the door. This appears to be sufficient to warrant execution, it’s the timing and ongoing strategy they are concerned about.
Why I ask myself are they talking like characters in a 1950’s western?
Why are they talking like school kids?
Bad guys, good guys – “goodies and baddies”.

Back in the Classroom:

Teacher, by the end of the major combat phase of the Iraq war, 7,419 Iraqi civilians had been killed, primarily by U.S. air-and-ground forces, is George Bush Junior a bad guy, a bad actor, a bad hombre?

No, child, every American president is good.

Teacher, were those innocent civilians “collateral damage” or “victims of terror”?

That is a complex and morally confusing question, child. Here in America we do not like confusion.

Teacher, why do the American media continue to refer to the Canadians killed in the Ukraine Airlines crash as Iranians.

It’s less confusing that way, see above.

Teacher, is President Trump a bad guy, a bad actor, a bad hombre?

No, child, President Trump is a liar, a racist, possibly a crook and possibly a sexual predator but he is not a bad guy, a bad actor, a bad hombre.

Teacher, why are Anderson, Chris and Don so angry with him? Why the sanctimonious, po-faced editorials?

Because he is un-statesmanlike and because they have become lazy and are content to trot out the same tired outrage every day of the week. Their ambition is limited, they are happy just to be “not Hannity”.

But teacher, they seem like nice guys.

Your point is?

The Land Called Where You Are Not (poem)

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The Land Called Where You Are Not

that place you will never go
it can be one hundred miles away
it can be a stone’s throw
but there is one thing that is sure
there is one thing that you know
in the land called Where You Are Not
you will always be a no show.

 

(I located my inner Seuss over Christmas)

Taking part in Open Link over at dVerse

Top Posts 2019 #3:The Wrong Way Home (a ghazal)

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I picked this one because it was an attempt at writing to a form that was somewhat successful.

The Wrong Way Home

happy hours and peeler bars
he’s taking the wrong way home

a friendly toke, a line of coke
he’s taking the wrong way home

the night is young, pass that bong
he’s taking the wrong way home

a McFlurry, an Indian curry
he’s taking the wrong way home

a pounding head, a stranger’s bed
he’s taking the wrong way home

early dawn, suitcase on the lawn
he’s found his way home.

 

Top Posts 2019 #2: The Beautiful Game (The Lads’ Poetry Project 2 )

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I’m including this one mainly because the subject matter of the poem – sport and the level of discourse associated with it – is somewhat neglected in the world of poetry. When you read the poem you may conclude that that is actually a good thing.

The Beautiful Game

Me and the lads are warming up
for our Sunday morning kickabout,
the weather’s not so good:
a black cloud loiters over head
spitting occasionally;
there’s a chill in the air.
Not that we care.
We are here for that moment of magic:
those three short passes
that raise life above the ordinary.
It’s all going well.
We’re stretching, squatting
sprinting, jogging, popping
Esther and Abi*
when up steps Paul
all sanctimonious-like
and starts to rattle on
about how this is a family park
and we should watch our language
and surely we can play a game of football
without accusing each other of onanism.
The lads are confused, gobsmacked even.
My face adopts an expression
which would later be described as quizzical
Onanism, I inquire,
what is that wanker talking about?

 

*Esther and Abi (Ofarim): rhyming slang for ibuprofen, a popular anti-inflammatory. Esther and Abi Ofarim, an Israeli singing duo, had a hit with “Cinderella Rockefella” in 1968.

Top Posts 2019 #1: Todd and the Time Machine

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This is one of my most viewed posts in 2019, I’ll be posting one each day up to New Year’s Day. I’m picking posts from earlier in the year to keep things fresh!

Todd and the Time Machine

I
Todd’s time machine
has three settings:
time was
time is
time will be.

II
Sometimes
the time travel sickness
hits him
like a five alarm flu.

III
Returning through the time hail,
through the accelerating centuries
he hears his wife yell
from the ever present
from the basement stairs:
I’m turning off that bloody time machine
your dinner’s getting cold!