Stephen C. Middleton
Mare Nostrum (Lost at Sea)
The Palm Riviera
Liberty Villas (in her mind she owns one)
& the sea so flat, so calm
That old ladies take slow therapy
With walking frames in the water
& horses gallop in the shallows
But toxic, freighted (with) misery
Flotsam & jetsam, we disdain
Mare Nostrum
Cross current hatreds
Potent elsewhere
Falling trajectory
The Underground Railroad
The lost secret ways
(Land & sea)
From slavery
Call off the search
We are full, choc-a-bloc,
Complet
This ticks what boxes?
Protects what nation state?
What values we celebrate
Out of Flannagan – Booker winner -
Australian ‘mateship’
Now rationed, calibrated
Continents full, choc-a-bloc,
Complet with regrets, hypocrisy
Call off the search
Or worse
A sad litany
Now must validate the ticket
Lost at sea.
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London. He was born in 1960 in Maidstone, Kent. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, among them Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), and Yesterday's Music Today (The Knives Forks And Spoons Press, 2015). For many years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz inspired poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide, including Ambit (UK), Gargoyle (US), Otoliths (Aus), Acumen (UK), Sierra Nevada Review (US). Current projects (prose and poetry) relate to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.
Meltdown (Questionnaire – IDS)
Pits & scars, we talk of
Gaps in bone structure
Holes – that the scan cannot show
Grey areas on the X-Ray
Triggers, man traps, shiver
Meltdown (s) on the rap sheet
Flashing lights
How many fits?
Loss of control (& how often)
The probe, endoscopy, prostate
Stress – the questionnaire is here
It identifies the props…
& it’s goodbye to wheelchair & benefits
There’s the lie, there’s IDS,
There goes compassionate conservatism
Made flesh.
The Cull; Broken / Bitter
Broken, the compact / of civilisation. ‘Got me barred again’. (Charlie - & still they spell your name wrong). Broken – impact assessments outsourced, ignored, at any rate, suppressed. Pre-emptive. To the knackers yard. What ’34 did for you. Got my cards. Over & above / this & everything persistent & shallow. Must be more than gripe & graft (it isn’t all about craft). Is about work …worth. Shafted. First we take …aim / or slingshot. What shibboleths …diary or select a memory? Or; came back to me. But is this even work? (Bitter) Informed / dormant. No-one is shirking. Bitter & impatient on all counts / all fronts. Deep freeze. Blame the patient (the runt of the litter) not the disease.
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Militant Thistles