Adrift
by Bob Newman
(Winner of Manifold magazine's competition for poems about Lighthouses)

"It's black over Will's mother's"
she'd say as the clouds gathered,
"black as Old Harry's nutting bag".
And the cows would huddle together
to show their solidarity with her,
and it would rain.

She wasn't "hejumacated",
she'd say, but she knew her stuff;
in time, she taught me most of it.
Once in a while, when the fancy took her,
she's give us a little treat:
her party piece.

With one arm stiffly akimbo
and one doing an Egyptian snake dance
she'd be a teapot. For an encore,
she'd shuffle round and round on the spot,
mouth slowly opening and closing,
being a lighthouse.

I cast off from the shallows
with my new-fangled navigation aids,
kept her informed of my position,
shipped supplies home now and then.
I knew in my bones that her light
would never go out.

I was wrong. Now when storms brew,
or Old Harry's out on the prowl,
cows don't see, or do, but keep mum.
So who's going to look out for me?
Who's going to lighten the gloom,
keep me off the rocks?

A Metric Sonnet
by Bob Newman
(This was written in the train on the way to a read-in heat, and was voted a winner.)

Shall I compare these to last summer's days?
Are they lovelier, and more temperate?
I try to work it out; my eyes soon glaze.
Then, seventy-three; now, twenty-two point eight.
My old thermometer must never break,
Or else how would I know when I was sick?
And then there's litres, grams... for heaven's sake,
Why should this old dog learn the stupid trick?
In what new units must I gauge my worth,
A stranger in the country of my birth?
 

friends never depart from my soul
by Muhammad Khurram Salim
(This was one of four winning poems on 31st May 1998)

friends never depart from my soul
as their little deeds remain fixed
and tears may be the reason
why they seem more and more precious
fear may be the reason why we cling
to petty things just to be on the safe side
but friends they'll not vanish from my soul
they'll be there with the river's tide
as their boats increase in size
they row and stay and call the tide
their singing is my joy and pride
friends they remain because the Earth
remains fixed on its axis and rotates
they  rotate around me they touch my soul
I don't feel lost when my soul is touched
then my sorrow departs and my tears dry
and my morning breaks with the early sun
and my fears doze and doze as I'm in the clear
my friends never depart from my soul
though every winter goes away sheepish
and every uncertain night goes mercifully

the fearful oral plague
by Muhammad Khurram Salim

the fearful oral plague has come said the crow-boy
and we listened and farted in fear out went joy
in came petrification and stole into all like mud in toes
we screamed and were dragged off from the loos
to asylums and police stations where we cried
and felt morbid and blamed ourselves for lies
lies the image told us about ourselves and our status
they slayed us as a blood-curdling many-headed Brutus
when we couldn't instantly banish the oral horror
we grumbled like anything and lost much colour
when we hurt ourselves and our good pride
we had to have a left that looked like right
the oral-plague is now considered a bonus
for life's voyage is rough and crime's an onus
 

A Ballad of Baghdad
by Ken Barclay
(This was one of three winning poems on 10th May 1998)

SHEEP TRAMPLED HIS SATELLITE DISH

Newspaper headline (article unread!)

Up sheer white walls the paratrooper sheep
on their electromagnet-clinging feet
climb silently. A single file they keep
till at the onion pinnacle they meet.

For they will have revenge for slaughtered lambs.

The ewes, sturdy as satyrs, have red eyes,
as beasts in the conventional camera lens.
No need to black their faces for disguise -
they are the Ark's unreconstructed citizens.

And they will have revenge for slaughtered lambs.

Long gym-hours trained, vaulting over horses,
sheep-dipped with anti-stray shampoo,
given Titan strength from dog-trial courses,
no Hercules could match their derring-do.

They will have their revenge for slaughtered lambs.

Atop the pinnacle the satellite dish gleams gold.
The SAS of ewes poise to attack.
Hitching a sheepshank to the tip, they fold
a running bowline round and take the slack.

For they will have revenge for slaughtered lambs.

First on the summit, leading Blacksheep Bess
explodes her heavy hoof onto the dish.
Then each in  turn, like Orient Express
tramples and twists the hated thing to mish-
mash of metal. The gnarled and senior Ram,
a battle-scarred unhurried major-general
boots  in the coup de grace - and Bing Bang Wham!
The tyrant's line-out's made ephemeral.

Now they will have revenge for slaughtered lambs.

Above the risen moon the cows are leaping,
squadron upon squadron massing for the kill.
The para-sheep abseil to base, still keeping
single file, as bombs from cow-bums spill.

For they too seek revenge - for slaughtered calves.

The morning shows a Baghdad fantasy -
mounds of maturing dung, where blue-arsed flies
may frolic in a fattening jamboree,
while clean sun shines from anthrax-free sheeps' eyes.

And they have had revenge for slaughtered lambs.
 

An Excess of Fluency
by Rita Watts
(former Read-in winner)

She had another Caesura in the night, Doctor,
needed aspiration; she ought to be seen,
a scansion perhaps?
We settled her comfortably after
Matron's early roundel.

Her symptoms? An excess of fluency,
Onomatopoeia? Not once;
too well padded.
Manages in day-time
calls it going to The Waste Land
Where's the poetry in motion here?
she asks.

TOILETS is T.S.Eliot to her;
more anagram than jumble,
still does the crossword.

Diet's been changed, pastiche a favourite,
her irritable vowel syndrome is
so much better now.
Puddings? Got a toute de suite tooth!
Loves her Macaronics.

Problems mobility-wise,
trouble with her feet.
Iamb who Iamb; You are where Iamb

Stanzas quite well on her own;
with a little support.
Enjambment can be a nuisance, but
our metaphysical specialist comes on a Monday.
Works wonders
with her spondeeitis
and her stiff synecdoche.

Semi-colon results back.
Her pattern  is irregular,
metrical stress.
Some days doubly inconsonant
while others?
Well under control.

A complete zeugma? Yes, but
we're getting her measure;
gets on well  with the others
more assonance than dissonance
in the lounge.
What a collection she'll say
but that's natural stress
What a bloody anthology
I could write all their line endings blindfolded.

A classical case then Doctor?
Continue with the metrication:
the strongest
with her hot rhymed couplet at bedtime,
until
her final draft.

At My Age I Don't Buy Green Bananas
by Rita Watts

More aware now
Of spent past time,
My unknown, unused
Remainder.
Forget the bowl of cherries.
Seize each day
Two bites at a time;
No waiting here
Till the moment is ripe.
Sit by the fruit bowl,
Watch the hard unblemished pear
Deceptively smooth,
Unready.
Perfection passes fast.
Blink and it's over
Gone too far
Gone to sleep.

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This page last updated 23rd May 1999