GAS Featured Poet: Jim Ferguson

 

I started to write with serious intent in 1984 during a period of illness and convalescence. Due to a bump on the head I had developed an epilepsy which luckily diminished, and I was able to live free of medication and other restraints from 1990 forward. During this period I lived in Paisley, Scotland. In 1986 I joined a writers’ group that met weekly on Monday evenings in Paisley Central Library. The group was tutored by poet and critic Tom Leonard who was immensely inspirational and from whom I learned a lot about the politics of language. Some of us formed ourselves into a group called Itinerant Poets. We published several pamphlets and did readings throughout central Scotland, mostly in the Paisley/Glasgow area. My closest partners in this endeavour were the poets Graham Fulton and Bobby Christie: we published work by Ronald McNeil, Christine McCammond, Brian Whittingham and Margaret Fulton Cook.

I have always enjoyed writing poetry and prose. My starting point was with poetry and short stories. Over time I began to write longer prose pieces and have written five novels to date, three are unpublished. Two were published in short print runs by small presses: Punk Fiddle (2012) and Neither Oil Nor Water (2017). My first poetry collection, The Art of Catching a Bus and other Poems was published by Ramsey Kanaan’s AK Press in 1994. Since then I have published five other collections, numerous pamphlets and a couple of CDs.

I have contributed poetry, short stories, essays and criticism to academic books, literary anthologies and arts magazines, including: Air, West Coast Magazine, Variant, Nerve, Cutting Teeth, Minted, Common Sense, The Purple Patch, Edinburgh Review, Scottish Child, Rebel Inc, Billy Liar, The Echo Room, The Wide Skirt, Harry’s Hand, Blade, Cerasus, Dog, Dreich, Gutter Magazine, Metachrosis Literary and New Writing Scotland. I also had work in the Clocktower Press publications, Folk and Zoomers edited by Duncan McLean in the early nineteen nineties.

I gained a doctorate from the University of Glasgow for my biographical study of Paisley poet and songwriter Robert Tannahill (1774-1810).  More recently I have been working in collaboration with artist Louise Malone, poet Derek J. Brown, musicians Carol Jamnejad, Brian McFall, and others, as part of The Glasgow Literary Lounge Arts Collective which was formed out of an idea conceived by the late Ruby McCann: under this banner we have hosted many live events and produced loadsa FnB videos. 

I live in the East End of Glasgow and tutor a weekly creative writing group at Glasgow Kelvin College.

Jim Ferguson 11 September 2023. 

This is a list poem

 how the world’s horrors scream at you

and how the middle-classes avoid and ignore them

and how the workers are seduced by soaps

and how the homeless and dispossessed know it

and how the poets drink to oblivion

and how the comedians think their lives serious

and how the novelists write only pulp

and how the insane are mostly in prison

and how the newspapers strive to cover it... ...up

and how the oligarchs conspire to deceive

and how the religions rush to look the other way

and how the tv won’t really show it

and how the footballers don’t know the price of milk

and how the snobs watch the cream curdle

and how the athletes compete for the money

and how the bureaucrats use forms to hide it

and how the internet is too free to tell it

and how the musicians sing nothing but pop

and how the bankers are rewarded for fraud

and how the politicians pretend nothing happened

and how the fiddlers basically fiddle

and how the junkies are mystics in tatters

and how the smokers pay all that tax

and how the gangsters are really all police

and how the police are all really gangsters

and how the teachers are not free to teach

and how the stupid are the first to condemn

and how the pious are sexual oppressors

and how the drunks are poets in disguise

and how the arms dealers blow off your legs

and how the rage at injustice rages no more

and how the universe floats on inside us

and how the spies are always your neighbours

and how the whole fucking thing is mendacious

and how you can’t even trust your own self

and how real success is to merely survive

a little longer

                       than the person

                                                  dying in the bed

                                                                              next to yours  

Our Planet, Our Home

 

the planet Earth is reading old books

as if to know our world better

as if to understand how

hearts come to burst apart

when questions physicists might ask

about light and electricity and radiation

 

and magnetic fields are all related just like

any other family, full of upstarts, wayward sheep,

 

who would have thought, all fingers and thumbs,

in the grey-green light of day, for all of us,

 

a suite of equations reveals some invisible force ─

in night’s dark-matter, in mysterious musical stars

 **

  

so the planet Earth breathes and says

there’s violence in the winds and floods

in solar flares and supernovae,

damaged hearts look out with innocent eyes

 

the earth rotates ─ a massive magnet

falling through space as continents drift

 

hift and buckle    break           apart

cracking the crust of everything

considered real in dreams of permanence ─

folk and fauna flock to higher ground

 

or busily pray to save themselves

naively smiling, children stare

 

terrifyingly terrified at the wall of fire

that speeds unbound toward them

**

Earth holds all the properties of matter in hand

while we’re trying to understand that rock

 

can bend and ice can flow and lava too, from vast

volcanic pimples, some like Arthur’s Seat

 

are now extinct, no pyroclastic or igneous spew

to roll forth over Edinburgh New Town

 

how regally it sits, a planned affair,

when we walk out and take the air

madly trying to calculate the age of the Earth,

before the shock of revelation

 

places the dice in the hands of gravitation,

she is weak but momentum is strong ─

to look abstract science straight in the eye and ask,

is progress fair? (or fare?)

while doubting doubt itself,

the old rich cling to certainty while uncertainty is king

 

GAS Featured Poet: Karen Warinsky

Karen Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist for her poem “Legacy” in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, books and lit mags/blogs, and she has participated in many online open mics including Rattle’s Poets Respond and Ó Bhéal.  She has three books, Gold in Autumn (2020), and Sunrise Ruby, (2022), both from Human Error Publishing and Dining With War (2023) from Alien Buddha.  Her work centers on mid-life, relationships, politics, and the search for spiritual connection through nature, and she coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large.

Find her at karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com

Real Heart

 

Because I had a real heart

I understood for too long

accepted too much

missed some clues.

 

Because I had a real heart

wounds went deep

words meant more

sounds scratched and bit.

 

Because I had a real heart

it was layered over for protection

with durable material 

strong as steel

keeping out debris, rain, wind,

staying cold

preserving the insides

like a refrigerator.

 

But it’s not a self-defrosting fridge.

 

It’s an old-fashioned heart. 

Bring the hot water, a towel,

the knife to chip the ice.

It might take an hour.

 

Bring a book.

 

 The Burning of Old Love

 

Unwise to let it fester,

spiral notebooks crammed with

old feelings 

revealing too much pain

too much loss

my hasty cursive running on the lines,

an arroyo of emotion.

 

It had to be released, I know,

but it’s a decade later

and some decent poems 

now sit in books,

on the net,

shared on stage,

time now to tear the pages out

throw them in the woodstove,

let some of the secrets turn to unpublished ash. 

 

Believer

Now that I love myself

fully

to the max

there’s no one good enough

no one I’d rather wait for

at a sidewalk café,

stumble into at a restaurant, a store,

no one better than me to run an idea by,

take out for a treat,

offer half of my donut to

(maybe I’ll just save it for tomorrow)

write a poem for.

Wish, oh wish I’d had this true love

of self

all those years ago

when I pinned so much on you,

gave you the cream, the first bite, the biggest slice,

waited quiet, silent, for the yes

as you put your lips around all that was offered,

indulged yourself at my banquet,

watched for

the nod, the smile that said

you would grant your time, your breath, 

for a bit

before saying

it was time for me to go home.

GAS Featured Poet: Derek J. Brown

 

Derek J. Brown is a poet based in Glasgow, Scotland. He published his first book of poetry, A Strategy of Mirrors in Nov 2020. He is a member of The Glasgow Literary & Music Lounge at The Scotia Bar and likes to collaborate with musicians, namely Brian McFall . He also makes video poems often with fellow poet Dr. Jim Ferguson. He has collaborated with Ferguson on a book of poems titled Glasgow Jukebox  He has had poems published in various literary magazines including: The Red Skirt, The Fair-haired Review, The Banana Peel, The Singular Sock, The Scarlet Bow-tie, The Magic Muffin, The Hierophant, Gutter, The Hieroglyphic Hermit, Fathers and Daughters, The Sacred Mackerel, The Syd James Gazette, All or Nothing, The Magician's Scarf and various other literary magazines. He believes any form of completeness is ultimately deceptive. He considers his poetry to be a war against mankind's paucity of being.

Broken Days

In your cemetery eyes, sustained, in focus

Crumpled petals of an autumn lotus

Your blazing moon, your frozen tower

Aimless wreath, random flower

Broken days of wine and roses

Slender truth no mind proposes

Your passive fears, your violent hopes

Your kingdom fixed by supple ropes

A place I strive to breach, to enter

A final, peculiar, undying ember

Your knight of wands in his last uprising

Your magician's fall so unsurprising

Your swift rejection of earthly power

Fruits held sweet and yet so sour

I wait not for any bell to toll

I climb the slope of your erratic soul

Affections neither cold nor warm

Your trackless heart beats multiform

No question here of what love is

I'll be your prophet, your Orpheus

Cross your underworld, its false negations

Its guileful snares, its infestations

Your boneyard eyes, preserved, in focus

Crumpled petals of an autumn lotus.

The Truth

I've read Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg's Howl

I know the difference 'tween a glance and a scowl

You want to kill me, disembowel me

Throw my body in a dismal grave

Is the thirst you have one to be quenched

Your universe a slave, a sulphurous wench

The god you worship, what's he providing

Even the sheep (bless them) have gone into hiding

Liars travel by sturdy vessels

But truth, it carries its own credentials

No twisted cord it won't untangle

Nothing you build it can't dismantle

I'm no vagrant shadow that craves your light

Not some barren page on which you can write

Safe in your castle, you kiss your own loins

Hands complicit dispense worthless coins

But other hands light unnatural flames

Can extinguish faces, annihilate names

Turn a cobra deaf, blind a dragon's eye

Transform you into an ant or a fly

Keep your licorice piece in your candy bag

Call off your brute, pull down your flag

Shut your mouth, discard your pencil

Truth, it carries its own credentials.

Vespers

We listen to Vespers, we dream of Athos

His grand holy mountain 

No soul moves forward

Unless it is forced. It echoes within us

What slipped through our fingers

And yet, somehow, still lingers

Like post-mortem portraits, Greta Garbo

Expressions, monochromatic half-moons

Existence of evil such a curious comfort

My assailants swept under, I owe my small life

To illegitimate waves of monogamous oceans

I’ve spent time on planets constantly twilight

What does it mean to be part of this tragedy

A world inhabited by coarse veinless creatures 

Their aspects and hands cunningly disguised

Sometimes wounded but not destroyed

There are enemies here we can’t avoid

At last, we were free, in the sun’s rays

But freedom’s deceitful in multiple ways

We are still in a place where all love decays

The past is the present, it always has been

Where you and I covet one permanent kiss

A kiss that is more than it’s initial sensation

God speaks to people thru mouths of others

Some of us listen, we’ve no other choice

Not denizens of this city, its flesh or its bone

Our ears not tuned to its violins but our own

Nameless instruments concocting melodies

Between stone spaces and ambiguous glass

The stranger instincts are waiting to pass

A neutral sky breached by a legion of ravens

Criss-crossing each other’s elusive equations

That join then detach to then join again

Sentient formulas let loose from their slumber

While we enter dreams in which we must wake

But what does it mean to partake of a culture

A place populated by autonomous animals

Whose purified lips are so skilfully sealed

Their faces and palms seldom revealed

A riddle confounds that’s already been solved

To search for one word that equals all others

Is to seek out an entity that utters no language

And yet still possesses a mouth and a tongue

A countenance our eyes may never perceive

An object of truth our brains cannot grasp

Let us go on a journey through liminal realms

Within our patterns let us harness powers

It is the mind that keeps the world’s existence

Loneliness comes from that tiny awareness

And we walk the walkways, in our own ways

Inadequate vultures on Rachmaninov’s heart

Our eyes in sympathy with shadows that hide

Absorb sweet impurities of myth after myth

Simple light refractions feed off of each other

Let our sustenance be music, let art be our love.

A Personal Invitation (From A Psychic Notebook)

She passed me a personal invitation

Directly from her psychic notebook

While I knelt precariously between

Her lawless thighs, her Catholic eyes

Almost transposed me, her Illinois lips

Bore Gothic fruits, species I knew

Only from books. I sensed a process

The most exquisite corruption

A nectarous form of degradation

I felt a rush, a primal pressure

Her blend of Italian and Irish blood

Indecipherable lines of a secret history

Inscribed across her pulsating face

Like an excommunicated priest holding

The Cup of Christ I held with caution

Her heavenly head. She said, "kiss me"

And I wondered what it meant, what

It meant to her, as if a kiss from me

Could mean anything. Casablanca

Projected on a screen in my naive brain

But instead of going by time is betrayed

By its own seconds, minutes rebelling

In the name of romantic elimination

Ascension in vain to a perilous euphoria.

And so I kissed her and she kissed me

Yet the world staggered on, to the next

Sad but imperative new day of oblivion

And so this is the way it always has been

A dream of a dream that wasn't a dream

Cell upon cell, mutating, meticulous

A fugitive tenderness thrives in me still

An invitation from a psychic notebook.

GAS Featured Poet: Saloni Kaul

     Saloni Kaul, author and poet, first published at the age of ten, has stayed in print since on five continents, including eighteen states of the USA. As critic and columnist, Saloni has all of forty-five years years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume, a fifty poem collection was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All. 

    She has been published recently in  Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum (contains ongoing Saloni Kaul poetry page), The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, Blueline (State University of New York), OVI Magazine, Mantis (Stanford University), The Whimperbang Journal, The Imaginate (Rutger's University), Mystical Muse Poetry Magazine, The Charleston Anvil, The Treasure Chest, The Poetry Leaves Anthology and Exhibition, Arteidolia, Quail Bell Magazine, Harbinger Asylum and The Transcendent Zero Press and The Lullwater Review (Emory University of Atlanta). 

    In addition to performing poetry solo, Saloni Kaul collaborates with artists on installations and exhibitions revolving around her own poetry and with musicians and composers on live and recorded performances of poetry set to music.

ON EMBROIDERED SHAWL

 

Most hesitantly, unaffectedly,

In her unworldly-wise artless manner,

Without unnecessary fiddling, beating about the bush,

She spread out generously all her unspoken 

Hitherto closeted thoughts

On a timid line like a shawl,

Soon smoothening the creases uttered rough

With pauses unprepared, irresolute

Naively punctuating taut the unrehearsed speech,

As she spoke uninstructedly yet honestly

As though she may well have been insipidly logging

Far-flung distances wishy-washily

In a logbook most unsentimental,

Toying with their propinquity in contexts distant,

Bringing back and forth those adjoining zones

On the termed timed narrow gauge.

There is always a namby-pamby nearness

In narrow-minded constructed time, in spaces solitary

Where close kinship's liberally concerned

And approximations detailed scarcely count

When the point is minutely driven home.

Flabbergasted, as astounded 

As in a hair-raising encounter,

Skin tingling like nap fibres

Covering tiniest of trees 

Or on a downy fuzzy flannel scrap,

Our newly enlightened listener breathed in and responded 

Directly in this volley of words.