THE ENGINE 3

THE ENGINE 3

Each age of man can be defined by a guiding notion, a principle, dream, ideal. From the French Revolution we gain three great ideals, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. By this time, and it is after all quite some time since the French Revolution, one would imagine that these three precepts would be achieved and the common ownership of everyman and everywoman. The English Civil War challenged the Divine Right of Kings, and with the Regicide of Charles 1, Kings and Queens could never be entirely secure of their thrones or their heads. Even earlier, primitive concepts of democracy and human rights evolved. The Tyrants of Ancient Greece were admired by the people, because they granted rights and freedoms, where the traditional Patrician and Aristocratic ruling class had repressed the people. Of course it was even worse for the slaves who did all or most of the work. In our own time we have seen the rise and fall of the ideal of Socialism which seemed to promise to deliver the ideals of more social equality, but which ran aground on issues of individual freedom and the actual practicalities of a planned or mixed economy. To some extent it was also destroyed by its enemies. That there were actual conceptual limitations is certain, and even more so for that offshoot of Socialism, Communism. Socialism itself is a very abused word. Hitler styled himself a ‘Socialist’ as did Stalin. In our own era various purported and actual Tyrants have adopted the title. For Socialism it is a pregiven that people will assume planning for and of the individual. The promise of Capitalism is that it offers liberty to the individual to make or break, or just vegetate. If you are a Socialist you will read wage slavery or starvation.

The previous faults of the Socialist project may be conceptualised as a spurious promise to better manage Capitalism by granting more equality and social justice, but seemingly mis-managing the economy. Traditionally, the Labour Party’s scandals were financial, but the Tory Party’s concerned sex and sleaze. The scandals of the other ‘Socialisms’ (which were Right and Left-Wing extremist forms of Nationalism, for did not Stalin symbolise the Father or Patriarch of Russia, as much as a Red Tsar or monstrous rehash of Ivan the Terrible) were unconcerned and casual murder, a phenomenon of the Twentieth-Century which we now term genocide. Genocide is the actual liquidation of a particular ethnic or social group, Armenians, Jews, Kulaks, Tutsis. In these terms the 20th Century spawned the two phenomenons that modern man most fears, the serial killer and the concentration camp torturer. At this moment the first Head of State to be tried for the crime of genocide, Slobodan Milosevic, stands in The Hague, but his case offers the same ambiguities as the Nuremburg Trials. Adolf Hitler had no defence and realised this, but the other world leaders who carved the world up at Yalta were also gulty of abuses of human rights. We would certainly acknowledge Stalin’s guilt, but can we condemn Roosevelt and Churchill too? Milosevic realises that the Hague will not have the power or will to execute him, even though he must surely lose his case. He must lose because the Court at the Hague is not an independent court, but a puppet of NATO, the UK and the USA. It has been made clear to us that this ‘court’ will never be used to try either a British Prime Minister or an American President. That is not to say that Milosevic is innocent, he isn’t, but neither are Bush or Blair.
That the concept of political crime or crimes against humanity is a decidedly new phenomenon is obviously illustrated by the treatment of a former European dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was exiled firstly to the island of Elba and then to St Helena, an island in the Atlantic and very, very far away from Europe, but of course close to America, where actual sympathies might still have been extended towards him. Not that it mattered. Napoleon’s right-hand man, Marshall Ney, who commanded one of the greatest rearguard actions in history, the retreat of the French army from Moscow, was executed by the victors, and this surely was victor’s justice. Ney was merely a soldier, not an Adolf Eichmann or a Heinrich Himmler. Any modern definition of ‘terrorism’ must take into consideration the state terrorism of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Hitler’s long shadow still darkens the history of our era. Firstly Saddam Hussain, then Slobodan Milosevic and now Osama Bin Laden have been defined as basking in this shadow, as aggressors, terrorists, or both. And Hitler’s evil is different from any definition of evil in the past. This was ascribed to a force which was both unelected and unaccountable. But Hitler was both elected and accountable. For this he has been described as the abcess in the democratic process. In Marxist terms he is a result of the tendency towards Monopoly Capitalism. This ensued after a crisis of over-production such as that experienced at the time of the Wall Street Crash in 1929. The twin evils of under-consumption and over-production define this era of Capitalism The solution was found in Keynesian economics which led, incidentally, to war, as the gas pedal of the German economy was forced to the floor. Eventually the pedal disintegrated and the boot sank through the floor to the engine.

THE ENGINE is defined as a economic entity, it is a utilitarian and mass-produced artifact of everyday life, and not a fashion accessory, trend or gimmick. For that reason my editorial policy is to publish at least one poem by every contributor in the belief that everyone is capable of creativity and of writing at least one good poem. The vehicle for these poems is the internet. The internet is a mechanism for democracy and debate, although it has its abusers too. Where the line is drawn this editor cannot say, at present there is a hazy demarcation line, and ill-defined in legal terms too. But issues of freedom of speech must over-ride political correctness. Because of this it is my editorial policy not to exclude poems on the grounds of political correctness. Political correctness is often the product of a mind that fears to concede to the dangers of a widening consciousness, or to the terrifying possibility that no word is wrong except in context. For that matter the word negro has a much different context on the Carrers and Avingudas of Barcelona, than on the streets of London or Belfast. Beside the issue of political correctness is that of the critical evaluation of literature. Perhaps ‘experts’ will invade cyberspace, and perhaps that invasion has already begun, or is nearing its end. They will want to make orders and heirarchies. Well, this editor for one wishes them luck, but it is also his opinion that their time has gone. That the democratisation of art offered by the new possibilities of the internet is the future, that the net is their gravedigger, and that if they disappear we will be well rid of them. Their society was marked by the deep economic and social divisions of a previous and failed system. Most of the time they were failed writers or gentlemen/women who could not make their bread by any other means. Those Professors who produced their books for the University bookshops and their unwilling students, who commanded others with imperiousness, disdain and snobbery, who very often hadn’t the slightest glimmer of literary talent. Their day is gone. They wasted our time with dactyls, iambs and dithyrambs. They dithered and dallied by oxymorons, litotes and zeugmas. These were no doubt streams of light to them. To others they were streams of shit. But each man’s shit, it is said, smells sweet to him.

Poetry is short or shorter lines placed in some conjunction. Politics is long or longer lines (usually of soldiers) placed in some conjunction. It is up to the poet to do battle with those words. By definition they can do no harm, except to sensibilities. But neither can any amount of words stop a bullet in flight. Those are the polarities that any writer must negotiate.

You can send your poems and stories to THE ENGINE, by addressing them to Mr Paul Murphy at Quinqureme@Hotmail.com



















Over the past four years, Joy Reid has experienced considerable success including publication in twenty-six hardcopy magazines, nine hard copy anthologies, both international as well as in Australia and over eighty zenes. Her work has been read live in the U.S.A and in Melbourne and appeared on radio in Adelaide and she has won numerous competitions. In 1999 she was voted one of twelve ‘most internationally acclaimed’ Net poets, the only non-American to do so. She has just completed a lyrical novel titled One Solution for which she is seeking publication.

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Dark Water
We scull
dark water.

Debris-stained the dam lies passive
Bruised as a domestic dispute eye.
The wind sculpts chicken wire shapes
A terrapin
Up periscopes
Suspicion ripples
Then plink he is gone.

On post and pier
Water nymphs encrust
Amber shells brittle as toffee.
Some have climbed
Oh…nymph miles
Others crouch triple-deckered
In a lazy menage et trois.

We scull
Dark water.

Hands trail
Disembodied
Tea-colored, they float suspended
Dislocated as mate-less squid.
Oars perform their chore
Scoop water then air then water again
The day is warm
There is good reason to be here
Good reason.

____________________________________________


Lost
Love like glass
Can be blown to any shape
Any colour.

I remember
When Jezza was lost
How one day
She slipped moorings
Bounded off into the Mullungdung
Summoned by the siren promise
Of padded thumping.

I remember
How we slashed
Tea tree and bracken fern
With torch and anguished shouts.
Crashed
Through Manuka
On four wheeled motorbikes
Came up zero.
‘A snake,’ one seer divined… ‘collapsed wombat hole
call of the wild.’
‘Grey bitza’s finally gone feral,’ another muttered.
‘Nah, just got herself lost (poor mutt).’

No matter
You continued
To spear the bush with inquiry
While it mocked with Hanging Rock whispers.

Days later
She shuffled up
Apologetic and ashamed
With paws like grated lemon
Desperate for a drink.

Never was prodigal more welcomed.
Never did luck seem more profound.

Weeks later
You were diagnosed: Hodgkinson’s.
_________________________________________________


Choreography
Her Sketchagraph mind
Shunts back and forth: kerchunk kerchunk.
Those memories that she will not tolerate…

Are deleted.
She has forgotten
The color
Of pain
For the life of her she could not crayon despair.
Her childhood
Was all sand pits and lemonade
All toffee apple and playground swings.
Nothing lurked there.
Sandpits did not ant lion.
Her daughter
She dresses in bales of complicated cotton
In puffed sleeves, full skirts and cottage garden prints
Patiently constructed
After ballet, flute, speech and drama lessons
Have been chauffeured to
And from
And the precious, precious occupant
Returned.

It is only
Later
When biting off a green or purple strand
That images return
Like lemon juice writing held beneath a flame
And she must begin again
The necessary chore
Of re-choreographing sequences
That insist
upon slow mo’.

____________________________________________

Magic Eye Knack
The room’s alive with dust mote dance
An alien joy in this double bed and en-suite, Budget cheapie.
Why does poverty choose faux?
Why walnut-approximate?
Then again…
Deception tranquilizes.

In a moment I will thrust on cherry boots
Sluttishly heeled with industrial chimney stacks
Wriggle into basic black.
I will adventure out
Find a caf’
Sit and suck back citrus pap
Till pulp swills round teeth and gums
Like seaweed threshed by incoming tide.

Perhaps I’ll buy a paper
Spread nubbed fingers over Kosovo woe
Obliterate grief with a well-placed thumb
Perhaps catch a flick
Immerse myself in invented complication
Bloat on watery over-priced Coke
Feel stoked about the fact that someone called Elizabeth
Was no virgin.

Then again
I could just lie here
Trace water stains.
I have no plans.
The days/months/years stretch out… pointless as a coma.

______________________________________________________

Ligature II
Last night
I dreamt I crept through weald and glade.
Above
The swollen moon
Sprayed a milky whey.
No snapping twig
No slapping sole
Alerted my intended.
Into the synergetic landscape I insinuated self… un…
Til
White tail… search light flagrant… she…
Halted…
Aching for introgression grew… Raphaelesque-lovely.

Two fingers then cinched the ligature-like cord
Drew back
And
Zing!

But oh
No hind was struck.
While my screams…

Woke the children.

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Flower
This flower
This stem-less desire
Lies like a lily suspended above water
Black water
Primal with mud
Still water that tastes of steel
And something else.
Petals wait
Tremulous
Fear to expose the alluring golden store
And yet
And yet
How ardently this flower yearns
For pressing.
David Starkey teaches on the writing program at the University of California-Santa
Barbara and the MFA Program at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He is the author of a textbook, Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations (NTC, 1999), as well as several books of poems from small presses, most recently Fear of Everything, winner of Palanquin Press's Spring 2000 chapbook contest. I have published more than 250 poems in literary magazines over the past thirteen years, including work in recent or forthcoming issues of GSU Review, Ixion, Open City, Paumanok Review, The Pedestal, Rattle, Red Rock Review, Salt River Review, Snakeskin, and Stirring.
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November: Accountants Dreaming
They've whipped each other
And themselves so long
Their backs are thick sums
Of scar tissue. Their breath
Hardens into granite blocks

When the air grows stiff
And cold. They pluck
The splinters of ones
From their fingertips
And swab the wounds

With cottony balls of zeroes.
But these are metaphors,
And accountants don't condone
Figures of speech.
(None of this double-meaning crap,

They tell their children,
I swear to God.
I swear to God!)
Better just to describe
Their dreams of wearing sandals

To work, sometimes bare feet.
In important meetings
They crinkle their noses
And laugh unsuspiciously.
They gargle champagne till it clogs

Their windpipes, release the need
To goad and calculate
The way a child lets go of a kite
In strong wind. One swishes
Down Polk Street in a leather jacket

And matching leather skirt:
His bare thighs tickle,
His cheeks, unshaven, rub against
Another man's like bramble
Scratching bramble, scrape

Of pain and bliss.
Another fancies slicing
A lemon in half and sucking it
To the pith, smearing her breasts
With peppermint oil

Then standing naked at a crossroads,
An object of rhapsody,
As dawn curves above the horizon
And the last winged seeds of an ash tree
Go spinning to the frozen mud.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lone Justice

Jesus Christ, man, I don't know how many times
We listened to their first LP when it came out
Back in eighty five. I was an unemployed
B.A. and you were working the laundry
Room at the Red Lion Inn. Our chief pleasure
Was getting wasted in the apartment
You could barely afford; afterwards, I'd drive
Home to my folks. I taped it off you, but lost
The tape (not surprisingly) when I moved
Eleven times in eleven years. Now
You're a charity case with Goodwill; I'm
A family man who goes grocery shopping
On Thursday nights, browses the bargain bins,
Relearns the one lesson they won't let us
Forget in Y2K America,
That the past is never really gone, it's simply
Repackaged and sold at a discount.
Resistance is futile, Sal, believe me,
Though it still sounds sweet, that loping country-
Punk beat, piano and slide guitar,
Maria McKee crooning, "Don't Toss Us Away."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Humboldt Park
The yuppies and their condos are marching west,
Like back in the day: Manifest Destiny.
One by one the streets are falling-Mozart,
Maplewood, Homer and Cortez. Four-flats
Renovated, all the little tacky
One-stories torn down. As before, the Natives
Are sent packing, this time to distant suburbs,
To Aurora, Elgin and Joliet.
Those who remain, watch their property taxes
Spiral upwards. They complain, of course, but
To whom? Meanwhile, the newcomers
Bide their time, accommodate, look
The other way. Chingaté? Pendejo?
Hm, must be Spanish for "Have a Nice Day."

Niall McGrath is from Co Antrim NI. He edits The Black Mountain Review of short fiction and poetry.
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Burden
A salutary lesson, in stoicism,
Sense, whatever, as I lay beneath
The bale of hay on the dusty silo
Black plastic coversheet in toddler
Weakness, unable to lift the heavy
Burden off my chest, hands and cheeks
Scratched by rough stalk-ends,
Throat and chest troubled by mustiness
As I struggled to free myself.
It was uncle Alan, for all his schizo
Darkness, who had pity in his eyes
As well as an unlit fag behind his ear
Going soggy as the sweat dripped
Beneath corrugated tin roof,
When he raised the bale from
The yapping boy who wanted to be
Grown up before his time
But only got in the way.
How much time passes? Not much
Till the scene changes from that summertime:
Uncle Alan has succumbed to the black tar
In his lungs, dad crippled by the tightness
In his heart - it’s this teenager who carries
Bales from barn to shed, invoices stuffed
Into pockets, rubber boots split where
I’ve stabbed them with stray grape prongs,
Who takes the penknife from dad
To split the twine and toss liths
To calves and bullying cows in unlit leantos
As winter snows swirl through bare trees.
_____________________________________
The Front Gates
Traffic lights streak red and white in the rain,
Pedestrians spill across the street as orange flashes;
Buses’ brakes hiss, taxi signs beam promisingly.
Shop windows blaze warmly, offering cute clothes,
Delicious delicacies, exciting electronic games
And gadgets thrilling DVDs and cool CDs.
Cars brake on cobbled ground at the end
Of Royal Avenue, pausing in the arcing
Gateway of City Hall - huge black gates closed,
Though a security guard watches for expected
VIPs - tired shoppers flop into front seats,
Off towards their destinations, disparate homes -
This time before the grand white building brief.

Mike Hoy has had stories, articles and travel features published and has contributed to education books. He has had poems in Aireings, Braquemard, Envoi, Iota, The North, Orbis, Other Poetry, Pennine Platform, Pennine Ink, Poetry Nottingham, The Reader, Smiths Knoll, Vigil, Weyfarers etc. He has a collection of high-rise poems Just a Twoc at Twilight, and has edited two collections of poems by parents of heroin addicts Hard Stuff and Hard Stuff 2.

Feet of Daylight
Feet were to stand on
Your own two, except-
Mine smelt of Camembert,
A side-effect of adolescence.
A lesser scent of doles
Kept them grounded until,
Between marriages,
Some massage Madonna
Stroked them, made love to them.
Caused them to lose the aroma
Of lost causes and roam around
Dancing away the stinking blues
In sinful, silver buckled,
Crepe soled, rock', roll
Leopard-skin shoes.
___________________


Happy Birthday
I buried ma this morning
But the party is planned,
Too late to cancel
And I don’t want to be lonely,
Could do with dancing
To Bony Maronie, only…
Jan and Alice offer solace
Then go for one another.
Separating them I get it hard
From offended husbands
Wanting a face to paste
Over their own.
Vic gets sick, as she does,
And has to be folded
Over my shoulder
And carried to your car.
You think me macho
And reduce me to size.
____________________
The Chair
There are numbers on my dentist’s wrist
He’s prodded in my mouth for ten years
And I’ve never noticed the numbers before.
They had them in concentration camps
But he’s far to young,
Not in the least Jewish.
Maybe he’s an ex-commando
Macho killing machine veteran
With I Ds cut into flesh-
Only he’s ten stonish, wimpish
Not hearty, steak and kidney
More a vegetarian quiche guy
With flossing afterwards.

It’s driving me crazier
Than his zizzing drill
And the minute cleaner
Vacuuming cornered bits
In my cavity.
It is drastic. Should I ask?
Oh, I see, only a clear
Plastic arm protector.

___________________


Radio Times
Saturday night after Tom Sawyer
Or such by the fire with dad
I was allowed to hear The Play
Sometimes too high falutin’
Or grown up, from a wireless
Like a railway arch.

A stately radio fit for a king
To be buried in. Full of valves
That crackled as they burned.
The light of programmes
Reflecting from rocket windows
During Journey into Space.

I sat on the table with ear
Clamped as if to a giant headset
To hear coded messages
Steeped in sin, seeping
Through the brown sunburst
From Luxenburg, Tennessee.
__________________
Defile
Stool pigeon holed
While rasping voices rub
Producing friction to erase
The part that avoids restaurants,
Garden centers and crawls to bed
At Christmas pulling millennia
Over my head:
The part that won’t record
Rank and number, wants to strut
Its aged stuff in sweaty vests
And leopard skin slacks.

So I slip this in your file
Trusting you to lubricate the bars,
Provide the tunnel
To let me out.
And in.
___________________
Jamie Spracklen is editor of the magazine Monas Heiroglyphas and its poetry supplement, Marginalia. He has been published in a large number of magazines including; Shadowdance, Erased Sigh, Sigh, Big Issue Lit Supplement, Bard Hair Day, Poetry Monthly, The Dark Fantasy Newsletter, Visionary Tongue, Tombraver and many more. He is a qualified archaeologist.



In Response To My Popular Art
“From raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages...”

Dylan Thomas - ‘My Craft or Sullen Art.’

In response to my popular art,
Wilfred’s words filled shell-holes
And Dylan’s dog-green fuse
Ran the course of trees (and veins).
In response to my popular art,
Brave men were crossed by worthless silver,
And in fever George Gordon took a sword to Greece.

But,
I in response to my popular art,
Stand at sodium corners,
Counting out my favourite syllables
And soliciting like any other beggar,
Soldier-son or housewife,
‘til I am noticed or undone.

Rebecca Galloway has had several poems accepted for publication in magazines in the U.K. and the U.SSA, She is also the editor of U.S.A online and soon to be in print poetry magazine. www.podpoetry.co.uk


The Visit

Inside this camphor wood chest I have saved every breath,
Each exhalation, in glass bottles stoppered with wax
Since the day you began.

Your first breath is beautiful, filled with pathos and pain
I examine the vial often, latent and cool,
With tender revolutions, gentle as an ocean.

Each fugitive hair,
Cloud soft and translucent, is woven into
This fine cloth, a cats cradle for your breath.

Each flake of skin drifts in dunes slowly spilling
From upper to lower orb
The hourglass, measuring and predicting you
Atom by atom.


The Radiologists Daughter

The radiologists daughter has never denied me,
Although her ambivalent acrobatics may be severe.

Sympathetic semiautomatic kisses sustain,
Sober intent for truth latently succeeds in

Persuading those distant resuscitators,
To reluctantly breathe.

Razorblade eyelashes falling down like rain
Sticky tears like apple seeds melting through the wooden floor

Arched back, swinging hips, gaping mouth,
The whirling dervish dispensing visions,
Reliable, unpredictable, overwhelming.
The forgotten wasp.

Unwelcome as a baby on a long haul flight
A wasp in a bottle spins, seething.

Heaven sellers, travelling in pairs,
Nicely turned out, but not today thanks.

A sudden reminder, sharp and heavy.
God’s foot in the small of my back.

The forgotten wasp is drowsy, suffocating
But still furious and stinging.

In unison their mantra glides surreptitiously through.
‘Change your mind’